Cognitive Route Of L2 Vocabulary Acquisition

Vocabulary is central to language and words are of critical importance to the typical language learners (Zimmerman 1997). Given the importance of vocabulary to learning a language, there has been an increasing interest in second/foreign language vocabulary learning and teaching in the last decades.Vocabulary size plays a key role in language learning. To remember a huge number of new words both in forms and meanings is a task of great difficulty for most language learners to learn a second/foreign language. And vocabulary learning strategies, as a crucial part of language learning strategies, are found necessary to facilitate second/foreign language vocabulary learning, and have been of considerable value to second/foreign language vocabulary research and pedagogy. The investigation from the cognitive perspective has advanced our understanding of the processes learners use to develop their competence/proficiency in a second or foreign language. Furthermore, the information processing and depth of processing model contribute more to understand and improve the process of vocabulary learning.Not many researches of L2 vocabulary acquisition have been done from the cognitive and psychological perspectives in China-not to mention researches of L2 vocabulary learning strategies. Much attention, on the other hand, has been given to the strategies used by the good/successful/high-proficiency learners. The empirical researches directed at lower proficiency students, like those B level students in Jiaxing University, are rare.Taking account of it, the author conducted a case study to investigate the questions like how large is the vocabulary of the students in B level, what are the cognitive processes of vocabulary acquisition and what hinders the students'vocabulary development by the means of reviewing literature and using Vocabulary Levels Test and Questionnaire of Vocabulary Learning Strategies.In the present study, the author developed her own framework of vocabulary learning strategies on the basis of O'Malley and Chamot's (1990) taxonomy of language learning strategies, Schmitt's (1997) taxonomy of vocabulary learning strategies, and the author's own teaching experience, in the light of cognitive psychology, especially the information processing model and depth of processing model (Craik and Lockhart,1972; Craik and Tulving,1975). The cognitive processes of vocabulary acquisition, which mean more than memory process, were explored and explained. Consequently, metacognition and social cognition should be taken into consideration for the cognitive processes of vocabulary acquisition. The investigation into the vocabulary size and learning strategies revealed that the English vocabulary size of B level students is far below the basic requirements of the College English Curriculum Requirements, and the students in B level do use some strategies in learning vocabulary, but the strategies they used most are those only involving shallow processing. What's more, the differences in the use of the strategies between the intermediate- and low-proficiency students do exist, but not remarkable. Accordingly some implications are provided with regard to the cognitive processes of vocabulary acquisition and strategy instruction.