A Study Of Students' Vocabulary: Passive And Controlled Active

Vocabulary is the building material of language, and vocabulary study is therefore the most important in any language learning. Studies on learners' vocabulary have already shifted from quantitative investigations to qualitative ones in foreign countries while in China, this kind of research mainly measures learners' passive vocabulary size, with the assessment of controlled active vocabulary being often neglected.Guided by the new standards of the revised College English Syllabus(1999), this paper adopts Nation and Laufer vocabulary knowledge dimensions and measurement theory in trying to make a small scale investigation on non-English majors' passive and controlled active vocabulary in Central South University with such research instruments as passive vocabulary test, controlled active vocabulary test and interviews. It also examines the relationships between these two types of vocabulary, the relationships between vocabulary and CET Band 4 scores and the effects of vocabulary learning strategies on the vocabulary development.Data analysis shows students' passive vocabulary and controlled active vocabulary have increased respectively in one-year instruction, whose correlations fall into one of the three trends: high significant, low significant and little significant on different word scales. The research also shows that increasing speed of students' vocabulary has an obvious correlation with their performance in CET Band 4 and with their vocabulary learning strategies.