On English Vocabulary Learning Strategies Of Chinese College Students Of Science

There has been an outstanding shift within the field of language learning and teaching over the last twenty years with greater emphasis being put on learners and learning rather than on teachers and teaching. That is to say, language learners become the center of language teaching and learning. As to learners, many factors affect their language learning such as gender, individual background, motivation, age, and learning strategies. Among them, language learning strategies are one of the main research topics. So far, a number of studies have been carried out on it. However, the study of vocabulary learning strategies is relatively new. The research into vocabulary learning strategies has the tendency of dealing with individual or small numbers of strategies, and there are very few studies looking at the group as a whole. A number of Chinese researchers have also made contribution to the exploration of English vocabulary learning. Therefore, the author, based on the previous research done by some researchers abroad and at home, makes the exploratory study to investigate English vocabulary learning strategies.The present study investigates the overall pattern of English vocabulary learning strategies by some Chinese college students of science at a common university and their specific memorization strategies employed as well as the differences in English vocabulary strategy use between some Chinese college students of science at a common university and some Chinese college students of science and humanities at a key university, a teachers university and a common university. In addition, the differences will be made between the 'good language learner's characteristics and English vocabulary learning strategies of some Chinese college students of science at a common university. The study aims to show whether there exist great differences between Chinese college students of science and humanities at key universities, teachers universities and common universities and Chinese college students of science at common universities, and to shed light on the study of English vocabulary learning strategies, and pedagogy. The participants are 149 second-year non-English majorsstudying in Shandong Architectural Engineering Institute. In this study, besides classroom observation and a structured interview, a questionnaire, which is adapted from Gu and Johnson's (1996) and constructed by Fan Lin (2002), is administered to collect information on learners' English vocabulary learning strategies. The questionnaire is composed of three sections— instructions and personal data, beliefs on vocabulary learning task and vocabulary learning strategies. Vocabulary learning strategies are investigated at metacognitive, cognitive and social/affective levels. The statistical analyses employed are descriptive statistics by SPSS. The findings are summarized as follows:1 The students investigated have the tendency of considering vocabulary learning to be quite monotonous, mechanical, tedious and noncreative. They hardly obtain any pleasure and sense of success from it.2 They have employed a number of strategies at metacognitive, cognitive and social/affective dimensions. Among them, cognitive strategies are most frequently used.3 With regard to specific memorization strategies, they tend to use traditional, simple, easy, convenient, timesaving, effort-saving strategies. The most frequently employed strategies include oral plus visual repetition, visual repetition, oral repetition, semantic association, mental image and morphological image.4 With regard to differences in English vocabulary strategy use between the students investigated and Fan Lin's subjects, the results indicate that the students of science investigated are not strongly motivated. Most of them are passive language learners and they rarely make up sentence mentally or loudly or use the clues that the word is contained. Moreover, they display inability to interact with native speakers and other learners.5 As for the differences in strategy use between good language learners and the students investigated, the results demonstrate that there are significant differences incommunicative abilities, courage of facing their own weaknesses and the efforts exerted.The significance of the study is that it provides information on the overall pattern of English vocabulary learning strategies of Chinese college students of science at common universities and offers some useful hints for vocabulary teaching and further studies on the area.