A Research On Depth Of Vocabulary Knowledge Acquisition Of Non-English Major Undergraduates

This study investigates into the overall situation of Chinese non-English major undergraduates' vocabulary knowledge acquisition and their vocabulary learning strategy use, attempting to get insight into their depth of vocabulary knowledge, vocabulary learning strategies and the correlations between vocabulary knowledge and vocabulary learning strategies.385 non-English major undergraduates took part in the investigation; all of them finished a test paper of depth of vocabulary knowledge and a questionnaire of English vocabulary learning strategies (VLS). John Read's Word Associates Test with 25 commonly used adjectives as stimulus words and Paribakht and Wesche's Vocabulary Knowledge Scale test with 20 high frequency words are instruments used in the present study; a questionnaire of VLS with reference to Gu and Johnson's was designed and delivered in the study.Study shows that the subjects acquire only about the half of vocabulary knowledge; there is an obvious gap in vocabulary knowledge acquisition between good learners and poor learners. A survey on English VLS indicates that the subjects' beliefs on vocabulary learning are far from satisfactory; most subjects believe that vocabulary learning is rather a monotonous, mechanical task, demanding no creativity, and assume that vocabulary learning is mainly to enlarge the vocabulary size, and vocabulary learning centers on the pronunciation, form and its Chinese meaning. Depth of vocabulary knowledge correlates to various VLS at different degrees; the most significant correlation is between depth of word knowledge and selective attention strategy.The author encourages Chinese learners of English employ both metacognitive and cognitive strategies to learn English vocabulary and improve their depth of vocabulary knowledge.