An Empirical Study Of Cognitive And Metacognitive Vocabulary Strategy Training On Non-English Majors

The present thesis reports an empirical study that investigates the effectiveness of cognitive and metacognitive vocabulary learning strategy training on the non-English majors of Shandong University at Weihai. The study attempts to find the relationship between the students' vocabulary achievements and their use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies and aims to shed light on the effect of cognitive and metacognitive strategy training on learning vocabulary.In the last several decades, the field of second language acquisition has witnessed the reemergence of interest in one area of language study, vocabulary, and the appearance of a newly recognized aspect—learning strategies. Appreciation of the importance of both these areas has led to considerable research in each, and the place where they intersect—vocabulary learning strategies—has attracted a noticeable attention. However, most research, whether home or abroad, focuses either on investigative description of the relationship between the students' strategy use and their English performance or on the strategy training on reading comprehension. The empirical study of strategy training on vocabulary learning is few touched and such researches mostly deal with the cognitive and metacognitive strategy training respectively, rarely the combination of both. Thus this thesis attempts to elicit information about the effect of both cognitive and metacognitive strategy vocabulary learning training on the Chinese ESL learners with full-scale treatment of both cognitive and metacognitive strategies.For this study, 90 students from Shandong University at Weihai are chosen as the subjects. They are from two intact classes, and one is randomly assigned as the experimental class and the other as the control class. The training lasts 14 weeks. The pretest and posttest is conducted before and after the training with a vocabulary size test and a vocabulary proficiency test respectively. The same questionnaire is distributed to students at the time of pretest and posttest respectively to examine the subjects' use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies in learning vocabulary. Data collected from the research are processed by SPSS (Version 13.0).The results of the data analyses answer the hypothesis questions. First, the experimental class has got greater improvement in vocabulary achievements than the control class. Second, the experimental class employs more cognitive and metacognitive strategies than the control class. Third, the lower- and intermediate-level students of the experimental class gain higher promotions in vocabulary achievements with higher frequency of cognitive and metacognitive strategy use than the higher-level students. Last, both cognitive and metacognitive strategy use contribute to the vocabulary achievements.From the results of the study, it can be stated that strategy training is effective in improving students' vocabulary achievements with a special significance to the majority of lower- and intermediate-level students because of their shortage of knowledge and experience in strategy use. In addition, cognitive and metacognitive strategy training should be conducted hand in hand, and should be integrated into normal classroom activities for the sake of better effects.