An Empirical Study On Vocabulary Concepts And Vocabulary Learning Strategies Of Advanced English Majors

Vocabulary is one of the most basic elements of a language. The foreign language learners try to find out efficient ways of learning vocabulary of a target language. So, vocabulary learning beliefs and strategies have been studied for decades of years. Most studies abroad focus on the effectiveness of a certain strategy; the studies at home mainly select non-English college students as their subjects. The present study aimed to find out the vocabulary learning beliefs and strategies used by English majors; it analyzed on the difference in strategies used by both good students and poor students and the correlation between the strategies used and the learning results. In this study, both qualitative and quantitative study are used.This study tries to address these following questions: (1) What are the students' (third-year English majors) vocabulary learning beliefs and favorable learning strategies? (2) Is there any difference between good and poor students' learning strategies? If there is, what causes it? (3) Is there any relationship between the use of learning strategies and the quantity of the vocabulary? If there is, what's the relationship? Referring to O'Mally and Chamot's three major types of learning strategies, the researcher collected with the questionnaire, test and interview, and processed with the software SPSS, yielding these major findings: (1) The vocabulary learning belief "words should be learned through use." is more preferable than the belief "words should be memorized." among the investigation sample. (2) Students adopt more than one strategy while they are learning vocabulary. The most popular strategies are: dictionary strategy, note-taking strategy, contextual strategy and so on. (3) There are five strategies used differently by the good and poor students. These strategies are as follows: words should be learned through use; wider context; immediate context; extended dictionary strategies; usage-oriented note-taking strategies. (4) There are several concepts and strategies that affect learners' vocabulary level: words should be learned through use, contextual guessing (wider context, immediate context strategy), extended dictionary strategy, usage-oriented note-taking strategy and visual encoding strategy.It is concluded that vocabulary learning belief can influence the learning result; the more strategies the learners use and the more frequently they use the strategies, especially the effective ones, like contextual guessing and extended dictionary strategies, the more efficiently they will learn the vocabulary. It is certain that different strategies should be used properly to meet certain special needs according to different situations. The findings also provide some implication for pedagogy.