On College English Vocabulary Acquisition Strategies

Vocabulary is the building block of language skills and it plays a crucial role in learning a foreign language. Recent years, many scholars have made a large number of researches about vocabulary learning, but most are pure strategies study. This research attempts to investigate this problem from a relatively new aspect, namely, phonological awareness.Theories on language learning and those on vocabulary knowledge will be the theoretical basis for the present study, namely the input theory, information process model, level of processing hypothesis, skill-learning model and specific theories concerning vocabulary learning. The framework of vocabulary learning strategies used in this study is based on categories of language learning strategies, mainly on O'Malley and Chomat's learning strategies, who defined three main types of learning strategies: metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies and social/affective strategies.The purpose is to research college students'vocabulary learning strategies, and to prove the effect of phonological awareness ability on vocabulary acquisition of non-English majors. This study adopts a quantitative approach in designing the research. Data collection is conducted through the questionnaire and the vocabulary size tests. 107 Non-English-major sophomores are asked to do the questionnaire and the vocabulary size tests.The data collection and analysis show that the phonological awareness, vocabulary acquisition strategies and vocabulary achievement correlated greatly. Therefore, EFL learners should take advantage of vocabulary learning strategies, and improve their phonological awareness as well. Therefore, this research may be of some value in vocabulary learning and teaching.