An Investigation And Analysis Of English Vocabulary Learning Strategies Adopted By Uygur Bilingual Non-english Majors

Since the late1970s, vocabulary learning strategies in English have been greatlypaid attention to home and abroad. Works and theses on English vocabulary learningstrategies have been gradually increasing, and most of the research subjects are Hannationalities, while a few are ethnic minority students. In Xinjiang, research of Uygurbilingual university students on English vocabulary learning is even less.According to the present condition, the subjects of the present study are83Uygur bilingual non-English major of2010from Xinjiang Normal University. Bymeans of the questionnaire, vocabulary test, and interview, the present study tries toinvestigate the general tendency of students’ beliefs and the adoption of Englishvocabulary strategies and probe differences of adopting English vocabulary learningstrategies between high-score students and low-score students.SPSS17.0is used to analyze the data. Descriptive statistics shows the overalltrend of English vocabulary learning strategies adopted by the subjects, and T-testsare used to compare the means of the strategies adopted by high-score and low-scorestudents. The results are shown below：1).In general, the adoption of English vocabulary strategies about Uygurbilingual students is not high, and the adoption of social/affective strategies isrelatively the highest among the three general strategies. In detail, oral repetition,contextualization, note-taking, and social/affective strategies are “usually used”, andselective attention, planning, self-initiative, self-management, guessing, dictionarystrategies, word-structure, grouping, cooperation and asking questions are“sometimes used”. The general trend may be influenced by their English foundationsand Uygur culture.2).There is significant difference between high-score students and low-scorestudents. Specifically, compared with low-score students, high-score students aremore frequently using contextualization, guessing, activation strategies and selectiveattention, which declares that it would be more efficient to learn English vocabularythrough reading.Some implications and recommendations might be suggested below:Firstly, the realization of English vocabulary learning strategies should bestrengthened and then put them into use consciously.Secondly, the meaning-based contextualization processing model should bepracticed to learn English vocabulary. Thirdly, during the process of English vocabulary learning, the model oflearning English in English should be advocated, and more western cultures shouldbe cultivated. Meanwhile, the Chinese level should be improved consciously to avoidthe misunderstanding of Chinese.