A Comparative Analysis On The Strategies Of Incidental Vocabulary Learning Employed By Sophomore English Majors

With coming of new century, modern education is now experiencing a shift from a mere knowledge delivery, a "what" issue, to a strategy concern, a "how" issue. This shift finds its fine expressions in English learning. Both English teachers and learners show concerns for learning strategies.Vocabulary learning is essential to language acquisition for it is the fundamental element of the target language learning. Since there is a gap between learners' needs for huge amounts of vocabulary and this in traditional teaching materials, great importance is attached to incidental vocabulary learning.This paper has been initiated by a practical concern and a theoretical inspiration. The practical concern lies in change of English learning environments with various reading materials in English available. The theoretical inspiration is associated with the theories of Nagy and Herman, as well as those of Krashen. They advocate learning through extensive reading and many new words may be "picked up" through listening, speaking, reading and writing, that is, the learning of huge amounts of vocabulary is through incidental learning. Mow to learn incidental vocabulary in a more effective way becomes a major issue.The present research investigates the overall pattern of English incidental vocabulary learning strategies employed by English majors, the specific strategies used by high-proficiency learners and low-proficiency learners, as well as correlation between learning strategies and learning proficiency. A questionnaire, adapted from O'Malley and Chamot. is administered to 150 sophomore English majors from Hebei Teachers University. Learners' vocabulary learning strategies are investigated at three levels: metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies, and social/affective strategies. By using SPSS, the analyses of the data reveal:1) The investigated subjects tend to consider English learning environments are changing, and more English reading materials are available. Thus, great attention should be given to incidental vocabulary learning strategies to promote their learning proficiency.2) General speaking, English majors employ a variety of learning strategies in their incidental vocabulary learning. Among metacognitive strategies, selective...