Study On Metacognitive Strategies And Vocabulary Learning Of Chinese English Majors

Learning has always been one of the hot issues under discussion in the pedagogical as well as the psychological fields. Recently, more and more scholars realize that the basic purpose of education is to teach the students to be independent, self-reliant and efficient learners. Consequently, learning strategies come into being.However, English teaching practice in China is still far from satisfaction, and the researches done in this field still have their limitations. On the one hand, the students have long been accustomed to the traditional teaching style without being aware of the crucial role they play in their learning process. On the other hand, some teachers fail to recognize the dynamic part of their students in the teaching process. Although a lot have been achieved in the study of learning strategies, there are still few researches concerning the relationship between the learning strategies training and the learning outcome, especially between the learning strategies training for vocabulary learning and the learning outcome, which should be one of the most important aspects in foreign language learning. Therefore, there is a great need to conduct a study to seek for an answer to this question.The present study is intended to make an investigation on the vocabulary learning strategies that the Chinese English majors use through a questionnaire, and also on the metacognitive strategies training process for vocabulary learning. It aims at answering the following questions:(1) What are the vocabulary learning strategies used by the Chinese English majors during their English vocabulary learning?(2) Is the metacognitive strategy training for vocabulary learning effectivefor the Chinese English majors?The subjects of this study are 60 Chinese students majored in English from 2 classes divided at random. The whole research process includes two stages: in the first stage, the subjects are asked to answer the questionnaires; in the second stage, to be sure of the homogeneity in the two groups during the experiment, the vocabulary test scores in the previous final exam are used. After the four weeks' metacognitive strategies training process, a multiple-choice part from a simulative test for English Majors Band4 Exam is used as the measurement of the training outcome.The results of the questionnaires show that the Chinese English majors do use various kinds of learning strategies in then: English vocabulary learning. Moreover, the metacognitive strategies training for vocabulary learning proves to be effective in the process of vocabulary learning. The progress of the students in the experimental group is much greater than those in the control group, which indicates that the metacognitive training for vocabulary learning of the Chinese English majors is necessary and effective. The research shows that this kind of training should be widely recognized, and it would be effective in the process of English teaching and learning if adopted.The limitations of this study are pointed out, while some suggestions are made for the future study in the last part of this thesis.