A Survey On English Vocabulary Learning Strategies In Vocational College

With China's entrance into WTO, English is more and more widely used and plays an increasingly important role in our country. Vocabulary is central to language and of critical importance to language learners. In recent years, research on vocabulary learning strategies has been widely undertaken by many experts and scholars at home and abroad, and some significant achievements have been obtained. However, the subjects of these studies are mostly from universities and middle schools. Few efforts have been made to study the vocabulary strategies employed by the vocational college students. With the growth of vocational education in China, it has become an indispensable part of higher education in our country. In term of fields of study, gender differences exist in the distribution among different departments. At present, vocational college students'vocabulary is not as large as that of university students'. In addition, their general English level is not high.In this study,232 sophomores from Yantai Vocational College were subjects of this study,212 valid questionnaires were received as original data (male 99, female 113). Before the formal questionnaire, interviews were conducted to reduce the blindness of the study with 12 participants. The research adopted quantitative and qualitative methods through questionnaire and semi-structured interview. With the help of SPSS, t-test was used to analyze the responses of the questionnaire to survey the English vocabulary learning strategies employed by vocational college learners. The conclusions based on data from the present research indicate:1. In general, the vocational college students are interested in English vocabulary learning and hope to enlarge English vocabulary during the college study. The participants believe that vocabulary should be acquired by using.2. Chinese vocational college students employ a wide range of strategies to learn English vocabulary. Among the three dimensions of vocabulary learning strategies, cognitive strategies are most frequently used, followed by social/affective strategies and metacognitive strategies.3. Though not significantly, males show a tendency to hold the belief that words should be acquired by using. Female students and male students do not differentiate from each other significantly in the two dimensions, namely, meta-cognitive strategies, and cognitive strategies, however, they have some significant differences in social/affective strategies.4. There are significant differences between female and male students on planning strategy, rote learning strategy, note taking strategy, grouping strategy, activation strategy and cooperation strategy..It is expected that the findings of the study may shed light on the theoretical as well as pedagogical aspects of vocabulary learning. Based on such research findings, instructive suggestions and implications are provided on how to improve English vocabulary learning and teaching.