The Investigation Of Vocabulary Learning Strategy Training In Textbooks For Non-English Majors

The importance of mastering words in learning English on the part of language learners is well recognized by researchers in applied linguitics. To college students of non-English major, mastering thousands of English words in a very short time mostly by their own is a huge task. As the textbooks for non-English majors in college are the main sources of learning and reviewing English lessons, they shoulder the responsibility of helping non-English majors grasp the ways to learn English in general, and vocabulary in particular. An increasing number of researchers recognise that the mastery of vocabulary learning strategies itself is a means and an end in vocabulary learning. A good command of major vocabulary learning strategies on the part of language learners promotes the learning process as well as the learning outcome.Based on the assumption that most English textbooks for non-English majors do recognize the significance of vocabulary learning strategy training, the current study is carried out on the investigation of the textbooks for non-English majors-College English intensive reading (Student's Books 2-3), published by Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press-in the aspect of vocabulary learning strategy training, which concerns itself with two research questions under the hypotheses that the vocabulary sections in those textbooks help non-English majors develop their major vocabulary learning strategies and the approaches adopted in developing those vocabulary learning strategies are diversified:1) What major vocabulary learning strategies are involved?2) What approaches of the strategy training are adopted?In order to answer the two questions of what major vocabulary learning strategies are involved and of what approaches of strategy training are adopted, each activity in the vocabulary sections of the two books are analyzed. The indepth and the checklist methods are applied in the process of analysis and evaluation. The indepth method is applied to answer the questions of what major strategies are involved and of what approaches are adopted; the checklist method is used to compare the results gained from the indepth method with the vocabulary learning strategy taxonomies.Through the analysis and evaluation of those vocabulary activities, two main vocabulary learning strategies are detected, cognitive and memory strategies. The main approach adopted is indirect or embedded. Thus the hypotheses of this thesis are rejected, that is the target textbooks do not train students to use all the major vocabulary learning strategies and the approaches the training follows are not varied.In line of the research findings, this thesis put forward some suggestions for future textbook compiling so that non-English majors can benefit more from textbooks in their vocabulary strategy learning and using.