| Vocabulary is basic to language communication, and often seen as the greatest source of problems of learners. To expand the vocabulary size from 1,800 to 4,200 in one or two years to meet the requirement of China's National College English Syllabus has become the core problem of college English study. Generally speaking, there is close relationship between memorizing methods of vocabulary and memorizing effect. Although the use of a wide variety of strategies has been found to be characteristic of successful learners, the great majority of learners seem to favor some form of mechanical strategy such as repetition over deeper, more complex ones. The failure to employ more vocabulary learning strategies and make deeper analysis and process of new words makes students' vocabulary learning disappointing.College English teachers are faced with the challenge of how best to help students store and retrieve vocabulary. According to the Depth-of-Processing (DOP) hypothesis proposed by Craik and Lockhart, there exist two levels of cognitive processing: the formal level or the surface level and the semantic level or the deep level. Elaborative mental processing may help learners learn faster and recall better because they aid the integration of target words into existing cognitive units and because they provide retrieval cues. Therefore, the deeper the processing, the more durable the memory of the item processed. Encoding strategies involve active manipulation of learners' prior information and a deeper level of semantic processing, which may lead to effective retention of the target words. Gu's research (1996, 2003) showed that there was significant correlation between the encoding strategies and vocabulary size. Research on second language acquisition (SLA) finds that appropriate employment of learning strategies and proper instruction and training of these strategies facilitate and accelerate the process of second language acquisition. Therefore it is of great benefits for learners to embed encoding strategies in the classroom vocabulary teaching.Based on the theory of Depth-of-Processing (DOP) hypothesis and strategies instruction models, the present study is oriented to how to incorporate strategies training into classroom activities and to testify the effect of strategies training on vocabulary learning.Through an 18-week of English course, encoding strategies are embedded into the vocabulary teaching in experimental class. An Encoding Strategies Use Survey and pre-experiment vocabulary test and post-experiment vocabulary test were done at the beginning and the end of the term in both the experimental and the comparison classes. SPSS was employed to analyze the data. The findings of the present study are:1. Strategies instruction could increase students' awareness of their preferredvocabulary learning strategies and their learning style and could broaden their repertoire of vocabulary learning strategies. In the five-phase recursive cycle of the learning process, the present writer systematically presented and evaluated the use of encoding strategies, offered students ample chances to practice, evaluate and apply those strategies. After the strategies-based instruction, the students' vocabulary size is effectively expanded. Strategies instruction also enhanced the students' autonomy because the adoption of appropriate strategies allows the students to take more responsibility for their own learning2. Instructors can help students memorize the target words by systematically introducing and reinforcing learning strategies. The findings of the study would also suggest that explicitly describing, discussing and reinforcing strategies in the classroom can have a direct payoff on students' learning outcome. Strategies-based instruction should become an integral part of the college English course.
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