A Study On Depth Of Vocabulary Knowledge Learning Strategies Of English Majors

As the researches of foreign language learning and teaching develop, it has been realized by more and more researchers that learners'vocabulary proficiency mainly depends on their depth of vocabulary knowledge. Collocation knowledge is the most important part of in-depth vocabulary knowledge. Among all the factors that may affect collocation learning outcomes, strategy use is the most essential one. Therefore, this thesis carries out an empirical study of collocation learning strategies used by English majors.Questionnaire and interview are adopted in this study. The present study aims to find out the general patterns of collocation beliefs and strategy use among English majors, the significant differences in strategy use between students who only passed TEM4 and those who passed TEM8, and the possible correlation between collocation learning strategies and language proficiency. After analysis, the following major findings are obtained:Firstly, both groups agree that grammatical rules should be considered for lexical co-occurrences to be collocations. And the consensus about the vital importance of collocation in English learning is reached by both groups. Secondly, the study shows that English majors use metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies, activation strategies, memory strategies and social strategies in learning collocation. The study also finds that cognitive strategies are most frequently used while social strategies are the last category that learners employ. Thirdly, significant differences exist in selective attention strategies, planning strategies, guessing strategies and dictionary strategies. The research results show that most strategies correlate positively with language proficiency. Selective attention strategies, planning strategies, guessing strategies and dictionary strategies correlate with language proficiency at significant levels. Rehearsal strategy is the last category that correlates with language proficiency.In the last section, pedagogical implications and the limitations of present study are discussed. Finally, suggestions for further related researches are given.