The Research Into Depth Of Productive Vocabulary Knowledge In The Compositions Of Non-English Majors

In the study of second language acquisition, the research of vocabulary was attached importance until 1980s, but the focus was on vocabulary size (the breadth of vocabulary) primely. It was until the late 1990s that the scholars in foreign countries gradually realized that vocabulary learning was not only the matter of quantity, hence they put forward "depth of vocabulary knowledge", which was defined by Read (1993) as the quality of learners' vocabulary knowledge. Nation (1990) divided "depth of vocabulary knowledge" into two capabilities, i.e., "receptive" and "productive". In China, much study had been on receptive vocabulary and vocabulary size, however, the research into productive vocabulary, especially the depth of productive vocabulary knowledge developed late comparatively. English writing has obsessed the college English learners in China, particularly the non-English majors. The inadequacy of depth of productive vocabulary knowledge was one of the main reasons that had led to mistakes in the students' compositions. The thesis aims to explore the following questions: (1) What errors will appear in non-English major students' compositions owing to the inadequacy of depth of vocabulary knowledge? (2) What are the possible reasons that have caused such errors?The subjects are 90 sophomores of non-English majors, and the instruments are vocabulary learning questionnaire, DVK (Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge) test and students' compositions. The questionnaire is mainly used to investigate the students' notions of vocabulary learning and the habits of reciting words. The DVK test is designed to test two dimensions of depth of vocabulary knowledge, i.e., collocations and derivational affixes knowledge. On the basis of Nation (1990)'s framework of depth of vocabulary knowledge, the present study divides the errors appeared in the students' compositions into four broad categories (eleven sub-categories), form error (addition, deletion, exchange and substitution of vowel or consonant, coinage), positional error (morpho-syntactic grammar error, collocation error, phrase error), functional error (inappropriateness, part of speech error) and semantic error (misuse of senses). With the analysis software of Wordsmith in Concordance, the error frequency of each category is shown, and the context of the errors can be also seen.The results of the questionnaire show that 93% of the students believe that reciting words is of much importance and the ways to enlarge the vocabulary size are reciting the words in the vocabulary books and listening to the English teachers' imparting; many students don't form good reciting habits. Many students hold that the most effective way to learn vocabulary is to use in spoken or written language, followed by remembering word-building knowledge and repetition.In DVK test, the collocation part mainly tests four categories, i.e., the collocations between verb and noun, preposition and noun, adjective and noun and phrases. The average rate of correctness is only 43.2%; however, the correctness rate of the collocation between verb and noun is the lowest (19.5%). The derivational affixes test includes the test of prefixes and suffixes. The correctness rates of prefixes and suffixes are 36.8% and 15.0% respectively, however, the correctness rates of the words including prefixes and suffixes are 51.6% and 36.2% correspondingly. Thus it can be seen that many students don't use the strategy of word building while reciting words.In the four broad error categories, the positional errors rank the first (56.6%), followed by form errors (17.6%), functional errors (16.1%) and semantic errors (9.6%), and the percentage of each sub-category is also shown in the thesis. Through discussing the reasons that have caused such mistakes, the thesis aims to give some teaching and learning suggestions in the hope that English teachers will regard the reasons of the errors to promote the learning quality of the students' depth of vocabulary knowledge.Due to the limitation of time and research subjects, the research into the depth of productive vocabulary knowledge for non-English majors may be not comprehensive; hence further related research is expected to continue.