An Empirical Study On Non-English Major Undergraduates' English Vocabulary Learning Difficulties And Learning Strategies

Vocabulary plays an important role in learning English and poses great problems to English learners. This paper aims to examine the vocabulary learning difficulties students perceive, the vocabulary learning strategies they actually use and the relationship between the former and the latter. The self-designed comprehensive questionnaires on the students' vocabulary learning difficulties and learning strategies were administered to 270 non-English major undergraduates from China University of Mining and Technology(CUMT). They were divided into three proficiency according to their scores of CET Band 4. By using exploratory factor analysis, descriptive statistical analysis, One-Way ANOVA and correlation analysis, this paper explores: what difficulties the students of different proficiency have in vocabulary learning and whether there is significant difference between them; whether there is significant difference in their use of both form-level of processing and deep-level of processing strategies; whether there is significant correlation between different vocabulary learning strategies, vocabulary learning difficulties and different proficiency of students.As is shown in the results of exploratory factor analysis, the students have encountered three kinds of vocabulary learning difficulties: linguistic difficulties, pragmatic difficulties and affective filter. According to one-way analysis of variance, there is significant difference in the three types of vocabulary learning difficulties between students of different proficiency. Compared with the students of intermediate and low proficiency, those of high proficiency have much less difficulties in the process of vocabulary acquisition. They only have some difficulties in its common usage, listening and polysemy. By contrast, the students of intermediate proficiency have been in some predicaments with both linguistic and pragmatic usage while those of low proficiency are upset by all the difficulties.According to comparative study of vocabulary learning strategies between students of different proficiency, those of high proficiency prefer to use deep-level processing strategies together with form-level processing strategies. The intermediate proficiency tend to adopt form-level processing strategies, whereas those of low proficiency apply the mechanic and social strategies. In addition, on the basis of correlation analysis, there are significant correlations between vocabulary learning difficulties, vocabulary learning strategies and students of different proficiency. On one hand, proficiency has significantly negative correlations with the vocabulary learning difficulties while it is significantly positively correlated with the vocabulary learning strategies except social strategies. On the other hand, both discovery and consolidation strategies show significantly negative correlation with the vocabulary learning difficulties except that social strategies of discovery strategies are significantly positively correlated with the vocabulary learning difficulties.This study not only sheds light on students' vocabulary learning, but also provides teachers with fresh ideas for vocabulary instruction. It is suggested that teachers and students may integrate multiple vocabulary learning strategies to overcome their vocabulary learning difficulties.