A Cognitive Study Of The Vocabulary Learning Strategies Employed By Effective And Ineffective Learners

This thesis reports on a study designed to discover the strategic pattern of vocabulary learning by Chinese EFL learners and the ongoing mental process involved in vocabulary learning.The study takes a descriptive qualitative approach, using the questionnaire and think-aloud as the research methods. The questionnaire was administered on 59 sophomores to investigate their vocabulary learning beliefs and learning strategies. And 4 were selected from the 59 subjects for think-aloud study to detect their cognitive activities involved in vocabulary learning.The data analyses of questionnaire survey revealed the following findings: (1) It is widely acknowledged that contextual learning and putting words into use are valid means of acquiring new words. The notion that words should be memorized has been cast away. Effective and ineffective learners exhibit no distinctive difference towards the 3 kinds of vocabulary learning beliefs. (2) On average, subjects hold positive attitude towards metacognitive strategies. Yet, effective learners show higher executive power over their learning process. (3) Subjects are aware of the value of the cognitive strategies and deliberately put some of them into use. Nevertheless, effective learners outperform ineffective learners both in the frequency and variety of cognitive strategies. (4) Generally speaking, the subjects seldom employ social & affective strategies. Both groups of learners report to be low-efficiency practitioners of such strategies. The data analyses of think-aloud revealed that: (1) Effective learners don't outpace ineffective learners both in terms of strategy variety and frequency. Rather, they are distinguished by the ability to employ the most efficient strategy in the specific context. (2) Among the 12 types of learning strategies, 4 are found to be significantly correlated with vocabulary learning outcomes, with one positively correlated and the other three negatively correlated.The implications of the findings for Chinese EFL vocabulary teaching are also discussed in the study. And recommendations for future research on the related issues are also proposed.