An Experimental Study Of Strategies-based Instruction To Vocabulary Learning In A Vocational College

Vocabulary is central to language and of critical importance to the typical language learner. Nevertheless, after decades of neglect, the teaching and learning of vocabulary is currently gaining more attention in second language pedagogy and research. "The research on vocabulary stockpile has expanded in scope and complexity at a remarkable rate for the brief period of time."(Keiko Koda) Furthermore, with the development of cognitive psychology and learner-centered educational notion, the study of learning strategies has held considerable promise, both for language pedagogy and for explaining individual differences in language learning.Based on the background there has appeared a newly recognized area---vocabulary learning strategies, that is, the area where vocabulary and learning strategies intersect. In the last decades, the field of learning strategies has been very active. And the study of vocabulary learning strategies is also considered as a promising area. Considerable progress has been made in developing the study of vocabulary learning strategies. However, most of the previous researches in this area have been focusing on the identification, description, and classification of useful vocabulary learning strategies. There has been little empirical research that has attempted to apply explicit strategy training on vocabulary learning as a part of curriculum and evaluate the success of strategy training on learner.Based on such a background, this study is designed with a view to exploring the positive role of strategies training embedded in teaching activities might play in vocabulary learning, through a valuable approach: strategies-based instruction (SBI) which is defined as 'a learner-centered approach to teaching that extends classroom strategy training to include both implicit and explicit integration of strategies into the course content' by Cohen (1998). The primary purposes of this study are to investigate the existing status of students' vocabulary learning strategies in a vocational and technical college and find out the most used and the least used strategies, design the framework of integrating strategies-based instruction into regular language curriculum, and prove the effectiveness and feasibility of strategies-based instruction for vocabulary in authentic language classroom of a vocational and technical college.The study is composed of two parts: an investigation and an experiment. Firstly,...