Language Learning Strategies And Productive Vocabulary

In recent years, with the research focus of applied linguistics shifting from language teachers and teaching methodology to language learners and their learning processes, language learning strategies, as an important branch of second language acquisition, have drawn attention of more and more linguists and language teachers. Their studies involved the description of language learning strategies, the relationship between learning strategies and learning achievements, and strategy training, etc. A lot of researches have proved that appropriate and effective learning strategies can facilitate L2 / FL learning and assist learners make high achievements.Meanwhile, being another research focus of SLA, vocabulary acquisition has been studied by many linguists and teachers both at home and abroad. In China, contributions have been made within vocabulary acquisition and teaching, vocabulary use, and vocabulary description. Few researches are about vocabulary size, especially productive vocabulary size.Employing a combined method of descriptive research and correlational research, the current study seeks to find answers to the following questions: (1) What is the general state of non-English majors' use of learning strategies? (2) How large is non-English majors' productive vocabulary size? (3) Is there any correlation between use of learning strategies and productive vocabulary size? (4) If there is some correlation between use of learning strategies and productive vocabulary size, which strategies have stronger correlation with productive vocabulary size?The subjects of the present study are 55 non-English majors of two classes from Grade 2004. Learning strategy questionnaires were used to investigate the general state of their strategy use. The essays they wrote in a timed composition test at the end of the second term were adopted as the material for measuring their free productive vocabulary size. Then a correlation analysis was carried out between the two types of data to find out the relationship between learning strategies and productive vocabulary.Oxford's questionnaire Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) was chosen as the instrument to measure the strategies used by the subjects. Lexical Frequency Profile (LFP) created by Laufer & Nation was used for measuring productive vocabulary in the subjects' essays. By way of classifying the highest frequency words (1-1000), the second highest frequency words (1001-2000) and low frequency words (academic words and off-list words) used by subjects, it can be applied to analyze speeches or written texts. A higher percentage of low frequency words indicate a larger productive vocabulary size of the subject. The data collected by SILL (overall average score and average of each group of strategies) and the percentages of low frequency words calculated by LFP were analyzed by SPSS.