| How to effectively learn English vocabulary has become a big concern for the majority of English learners, particularly for those in secondary vocational colleges in China. In recent years, the Chinese and foreign linguists have done a series of studies on the vocabulary learning strategies. Most of the studies aimed at college or secondary school students, while relatively few studies were concerned with vocational college students. The author designed a vocabulary learning strategy questionnaire based on Gu and Johnson's latest version of the questionnaire VLQ5. This thesis tries to discuss the following questions:1. What is the general situation of the vocational college students using the vocabulary learning strategies in learning English vocabulary?2. What is the difference in the use of the vocabulary learning strategies between different sexes/ majors /grades?3. Do high-level students and low-level students have different English vocabulary learning ideas and use different English vocabulary learning strategies?4. What relations do English vocabulary learning strategies have with the performance in English vocabulary tests?5. After a six-month study, is there any difference of students in Class 10 in the vocabulary tests and the vocabulary learning strategies?The experiment involved 471 vocational college students from Wuxi Teachers' College for the questionnaire and the vocabulary test (in which high-level students and low-level students are identified by the proficiency of the vocabulary test). The data are collected and analyzed by SPSS, and the conclusions are made from the study as follows:1. Vocational college students hold the beliefs that words should be learned by using or by acquiring from context, which is different from the traditional beliefs. They employ a variety of vocabulary learning strategies ranging from mcta-cognitive, cognitive to social/affective strategies, but the overall level of learning strategies in English vocabulary is lower in those who are junior strategy users, mediate strategy users or the in-betweens.2. Girls use the strategies higher than boys on average. That is say, girls use the strategies more frequently than boys. There are significant gender differences in cognitive strategies and social / affective strategies, particularly in cognitive strategies.3. The students majoring in accounting use the meta-cognitive strategies and cognitive strategies slightly higher than the students majoring in e-commerce, while slightly less than those students in social/affective strategies. There is no significant difference between the students of different majors in beliefs and strategies.4. Meta-cognitive strategies, cognitive strategies and social / affective strategies show the downward trend with the increased grade. That is, the first-grade and second-grade use the vocabulary learning strategies better than the third-grade students. There are significant differences in the meta-cognitive strategies, cognitive strategies and social / affective strategies among Grade One, Grade two, and Grade Three.5. There exists significant difference in meta-cognitive strategies and cognitive strategies between high-level students and low-level students. Difference is also shown in social / affective strategies. This suggests that high-level students use more strategies than low-level students when completing learning tasks.6. The beliefs that "words should be learned by acquiring from context" and "words should be learned by using them" turn out to have positive correlation with high frequency vocabulary test. While the belief that "learning words by memorization" shows negative correlation with high frequency vocabulary test. All of the meta-cognitive strategies are positively correlated with vocabulary test. Of all the 18 kinds of specific cognitive strategies, 16 kinds of strategies are positively correlated with vocabulary test, most of which are highly related. In the social / affective strategies, reducing anxiety and training perseverance are highly relevant with vocabulary test.7. The follow-up study finds that after half a year's study, students have improved a certain level of high frequency vocabulary. However, meta-cognitive strategies and social / affective strategies have lower utilization rates, which may be related to the lack of teachers' guidance and students'awareness. As for the application of cognitive strategies, especially pronounciation, the use of vocabulary list, hearing coding, and the use of word formation, show a significant difference, which may be related to the teaching of conscious cognitive vocabulary strategies in the daily activities.Finally, the pedagogical implications of the research are discussed; the limitations are mentioned and suggestions for further research are proposed.
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