An Empirical Research On Memory Strategy Use In Vocabulary Acquisition Among EFL Learners Of Non-English Majors

Vocabulary can be regarded as the fundamental and basic unit in second language acquisition. Vocabulary acquisition, as one of the most important fields in second language acquisition, has attracted more and more researchers'attention and focus in the last thirty and forty years.It is concluded from the results of a lot of previous researches of L2 learning that a series of factors may affect learners'L2 memory strategy use including age, sex, motivation, interest, major, the L2 proficiency, vocabulary capacity size, vocabulary test achievements, etc. In the previous study, more researches focus on the general description and categorization of vocabulary memorization strategies, but less are concentrated on the empirical studies on the concrete memory strategy use from a psychological and cognitive perspective. More studies are about the investigation questionnaire studies, but less are on the experimental study, the case study and other forms of study. Thus, to make this field have deeper and longer specific empirical study so as to promote the development of this field, this investigation study focuses on the issue of memory strategy use in vocabulary acquisition among Chinese first-year students of Non-English majors to figure out how they use their memory strategy in their acquisition of vocabulary and if there are significant differences among different L2 proficiency levels and gender. It also further analyzes the degree of the correlation between students'memory strategy use and their proficiency levels, their achievements in the College Entrance Examination.The specific research questions involved in this study include the four aspects:1. What are the general features of Chinese freshmen in employing memory strategy for their vocabulary learning?2. In the acquisition of vocabulary, do gender differences affect or influence the choice of memory strategy use? Are there any significant differences between male students and female students in choosing memory strategy?3. Do L2 proficiency levels correlate with the choice of memory strategy use in the process of vocabulary learning significantly? Are there significant differences between high proficiency level learners and low proficiency level learners in the use of memory strategy of their vocabulary learning? 4. What is the relationship between freshmen's memory strategy use in vocabulary acquisition and their English achievements in the College Entrance Examination? Do they correlate with each other significantly?Concerning the above questions, this study applies to the two main research instruments:The Vocabulary Level Test (to differentiate students'vocabulary proficiency levels); The Vocabulary Memory Strategy Use Questionnaire which have high reliability and validity. The data collected from the test and questionnaire is processed by the SPSS 13.0 from which the Descriptive Analysis, One-Way Anova Analysis and the Correlation Analysis are used to get results from the above four questions. The specific results can be summarized as follows:1. The results of original data indicate that the most frequently used memory strategy is "repetition", with "employing action" and "applying sounds and images" following the next. The least frequently used memory strategy is "creating mental linkages".2. There are significant differences between male students and female students in the choice of such memory strategies as "creating mental linkages", "applying sounds and images", and "employing action". The male students tend to use more "creating mental linkages" strategies than female students while the female students would like to use more "applying sounds and images" and "employing action" strategies than male students.3. There are significant differences between high proficiency students and low proficiency students in the choice of memory strategies as "creating mental linkages", "applying images and sounds", and "repetition". The high proficiency students tend to use more strategies like "creating mental linkages" and "applying sounds and images" than low proficiency students in vocabulary learning while low proficiency students tend to use more "repetition" than high proficiency students in vocabulary acquisition. In the four sub-category memory strategies, "creating mental linkages", "applying images and sounds" are positively correlated with students'L2 proficiency levels significantly(The correlation is significant at the.05 level, two-tailed), which means that the higher proficiency level students belong to, the more frequently they will use such memory strategies as "creating mental linkages" and "applying sounds and images". However, "repetition" is negatively correlated with test-takers'proficiency levels significantly(The correlation is significant at the.01 level, two-tailed), which indicates that the more frequently students used "repetition" memory strategies, the lower their proficiency levels may be.4. As for the fourth question posed in the previous study "What is the relationship between freshmen's memory strategy use in vocabulary acquisition and their English achievements in the College Entrance Examination? Do they correlate with each other significantly?", the answers are as follows:"creating mental linkages" and "applying sounds and images" correlate positively with students'English achievements in the College Entrance Examination significantly(the correlation is significant at the.05 level, two-tailed), which shows that the higher students'English achievements are, the more frequently they will use such memory strategies as "creating mental linkages" and "applying sounds and images" in their vocabulary acquisition. "repetition" is negatively correlated with students'English achievements significantly(at the.01 level, two-tailed), which discloses that the lower students'English achievements are, the more frequently they will use "repetition" in memorizing new English words, phrases, and expressions.Based on the following findings, some practical implications have been put forward concerning the vocabulary learning and teaching. For the learners, they should enlighten their consciousness of using memory strategy in vocabulary acquisition. They should have the ability to select different vocabulary memory strategy according to different linguistic contexts, communicative j tasks, and learning materials. For teachers, they should strengthen their teaching of memory strategy use in vocabulary memorization intentionally in classroom teaching activity. They should realize the importance and necessity of having memory strategy training on students'vocabulary learning, and train memory strategy in memorizing vocabulary on the basis of students'proficiency levels, gender differences, individual character, learning styles, etc so as to enlighten their vocabulary memorization level.It is expected that this investigation study can give the insightful and enlightening implications to this field of study. It is not denied that there still exist the limitations and further improvements should be made to contribute to the deeper and wider research of this field.