An Empirical Study Of Business English Vocabulary Learning Strategies Of Vocational College Students

As is known to all, the major objective of modern education is now experiencing a shift from the teachers' mere knowledge delivery to helping the learners to acquire the ways to learn, which is adaptable to the explosive times of knowledge and information. This shift also finds its expression in teaching English as a foreign Language. English teachers have started to concern about helping the learners to develop not only English skills but also English learning strategies.It is widely agreed upon that English vocabulary teaching is a crucial part on the one hand and a great obstacle on the other in English teaching and learning. To teach and learn English well, teachers and learners should make efforts to master effective vocabulary learning strategies. There were, however, fewer researches on English vocabulary learning strategies at home and abroad, to say nothing of empirical studies focusing on the Business English (BE) vocabulary learning strategies used by vocational college students who learn English as a foreign language.To most of the College undergraduates, especially vocational college students, learning vocabulary is the main problem in the process of learning English , and especially BE. So, it is worthwhile to explore effective vocabulary learning strategies for vocational college learners.Based on Krashen's input hypothesis and Lewis's lexical chunk theory, this thesis, with relevant O'Malley and Chamot's classification framework of learning strategies, uses SPSS11.0(Statistics Package for Social Science )to analyze the data obtained from the questionnaires and tests of 94 BE students from Hunan Vocational College of Commerce so as to investigate their major vocabulary learning strategies, the difference between the students' scoring higher and those who scored comparatively lower in using vocabulary learning strategies and the correlation between their scores and the strategies they used. Results of the analysis are concluded as follows:(1)Vocational college BE majors employ a variety of vocabulary learning strategies including the three dimensions of vocabulary learning strategies: Metacognitive Strategies, Cognitive Strategies and Social/ affective Strategies;(2)There are significant differences between good language learners and poor language learners in cognitive strategies. Good language learners prefer using grouping, contextualization, elaboration and lexical chunks strategies. Poor language learners use repetition, imagery and cooperation strategies more frequently than Good language learners;(3)Self-monitoring, repetition, grouping and elaboration strategies are correlated with the vocabulary scores.For the current situation of vocabulary learning strategies used by vocational college students, this study conducts a research on lexical chunks approach to BE vocabulary learning. Taking the characteristics of BE teaching and lexis into consideration, the author proposes that learning vocabulary through lexical chunks is effective and efficient, arguing for the effectiveness of the lexical chunks from the perspective of psycholinguistics analysis and second language acquisition. The thesis endeavors to prove the effectiveness of the lexical chunks approach through a comparative experiment based on four months' empirical study.In the part of conclusion, the author, after the summary and analysis of the results of the experiment, puts some tentative suggestions on how to teach vocational college students BE for confreres' reference, hoping to gain effect of "casting a brick to attract jade" and making deeper research and developments in the field of BE vocabulary teaching and learning.