A Comparative Study Of Vocabulary Learning Strategies In Basic English And Medical English Of Medical Students

English vocabulary learning strategies (EVLS) have aroused much interest in foreign language scholars and educators nationally in recent years, in depth research has been made on VLS used by general English major and non-English major college students. However, the EVLS of medical students have not attracted enough attention. The present study intends to investigate and answer, from a cognitive perspective, the following research questions:1) What strategies do the medical students use in basic English (BE) and Medical English (ME) respectively?2) What are the differences in the frequency of use among these strategies?3) What is the correlation between the vocabulary learning strategies used by the students and vocabulary test scores?The study was carried out on the 102 second-year non-English major students who went through a two-year period of EVLS training. The study used a 4-scale questionnaire of vocabulary learning strategies and a vocabulary test. A quantitative analysis was used to investigate if there were significant differences in their use of vocabulary learning strategies. As a result, the study revealed that the frequency of use EVLS and the impact of EVLS on the vocabulary test scores in BE & SME showed obvious significance. The kinds and frequency of the use of EVLS were obviously higher in SME than in BE. Hence, the thesis suggested that the teaching of EVLS to the students should be based on the training of strategies, and vocabulary teaching should be put in extensive reading, group activities (i.e. classroom workshop) and some communicative teaching activities in order to help them to select effective EVLS and steer the professional students in making positive transferring from BE to SME learning.The thesis consists of five chapters:Chapter One is an introduction, which gives a brief account of the background of theresearch concerning this topic. It also gives a very short description of the literature published in China in this field. And finally, the justification of the research questions on this study is pointed out.Chapter Two builds up the theoretical position of vocabulary learning strategies from the view of language learning theory and its goals. In this part, a detailed description of Anderson's ACT model of language learning is given and language learning, as a process of interactive use of declarative and procedural knowledge is stated and, as a problem solving process as well.Then, vocabulary acquisition and vocabulary knowledge as well as the difference between learning and acquisition of vocabulary are pointed out. At the same time, the detailed different views about vocabulary acquisition in this field and its cognitive perspective are also introduced. Chapter Three is concerned with the central topic-EVLS theory. It first reviews some general conclusions about vocabulary learning strategies which can be made from prior strategy research. Then, taxonomy of vocabulary learning strategies will be proposed and the individual strategies discussed in more details.Chapter Four focuses on the present study. In this part, the author introduces the study methods, the participant selection, the data collecting system, and the study procedure and describes the results of the study and the statistic analysis to the results.The last chapter of this thesis concludes the whole paper and discusses on the center idea, at the same time mentions some constructive suggestions in pedagogy field.