Word Knowledge Depth And Vocabulary Learning Strategies

Based on the word knowledge framework and the theory of learning strategies, the research is oriented to explore the possible development pattern of the acquisition of word knowledge depth and probe the possible relevance of vocabulary learning strategies to the acquisition of word knowledge depth at different proficiency levels. 58 students at three proficiency levels were asked to finish the vocabulary learning strategies questionnaire andtested on their receptive and productive mastery of two types of word knowledge----meaning and collocation, for each of 8 high-frequency words.With the employment of SPSS software, the following major findings are obtained. On the whole, there is an incremental development pattern of word knowledge acquisition through different proficiency levels and some vocabulary learning strategies are relevant to the acquisition of word knowledge depth at different proficiency levels. To be specific, 1) the development of meaning knowledge stagnated before the subjects' proficiency reached intermediate level. At the early stage of language development, the subjects have had a better mastery of meaning knowledge of the test words. The receptive acquisition of collocation developed significantly until the subjects reached the intermediate level. However, the development stagnated as the subjects moved form intermediate to advanced level. 2) The productive acquisition of meaning roughly does not show any significant development through different proficiency levels, while the productive acquisition of collocation generally demonstrates an incremental development from lower level to advanced level. But the development does not show any statistical significance until the subjects reach the intermediate level. When the proficiency improves from the intermediate level to the advanced level, the acquisition still stagnates for half of the words. 3) The productive mastery of 2 word knowledge types lags far behind the receptive mastery. The acquisition of meaning is far better than that of collocation, while there is no regularity between the productive acquisition of meaning and collocation within the same proficiency level. 4) The popularity of meta-cognitive strategies, contextual guessing and dictionary strategies increases with the development of language proficiency, while the popularity of rehearsal strategies seems to have a tendency to decrease with the development of language proficiency. Encoding and activation strategies do not seem to be favored by thesubjects at the three proficiency levels. 5) Extended dictionary strategies have been found to be the positive predictor for the total scores on lower level and the three scores on advanced level (total scores, receptive scores and productive scores). Immediate context strategies turn out to be the positive predictor for the total scores of the intermediate level. Association is the positive predictor and visual repetition negative predictor for the productive scores of the lower level.