A Study On English Vocabulary Learning Strategies Of Vocational School Students

Most language experts hold that vocabulary which is the basic unit in the language, plays a core role in language learning. Learning strategies are one of the key factors affecting the students'learning efficiency. The study in learning strategies began in 1970s. Many researchers found that learning strategies have positive effect on language learning, but most of the researches focused on college students, and the researches about vocational school students were very few. This thesis is an empirical study on the vocabulary learning strategies of five-grade students from Wuxi Teacher's College.The present study is developed from O'Malley and Chamot's framework of learning strategies. A questionnaire adapted from Gu & Johnson's is delivered to the participants. Students'vocabulary learning strategies are investigated at meta-cognitive, cognitive and social/affective levels. The study examines about 180 students from Wuxi Teacher's College, attempts to explore strategies possessed by vocational school students and to investigate the different vocabulary learning strategies used by efficient learners and less efficient learners and the relationship between learning strategies and the vocabulary learning achievements through one questionnaire survey, one vocabulary size test and the interview.Processed with the PASW Statistics software, the analyses of the data reveal these major findings:(1) The most popular strategies applied by vocational school students are meta-cognitive strategies. They are used more often than cognitive strategies social/affective strategies while social/affective strategies are the least frequently used. (2)The frequency of using meta-cognitive strategies are correlated with the grades while there is no significant relationship between cognitive strategies and grades, social/affective strategies and grades. (3) Good students adapt more than one strategy when they are learning vocabulary. They prefer self attention, self evaluation of meta-cognitive strategies and the pronunciation strategies, context strategies, guessing strategies, note-taking strategies of cognitive strategies. They also like to apply self motivation of social/affective strategies. (4)0f all the vocabulary learning strategies, six strategies which are self initiation of meta-cognitive strategies; context strategies, guessing strategies, note-taking strategies, dictionary strategies, encoding strategies of cognitive strategies that are proved out to be correlated with learners'vocabulary level.It is certain that different strategies should be used properly to meet certain special needs according to different situations. The findings also provide some implication for pedagogy. English teachers should put more emphasis on strategy training and learner training should be an inevitable part of second language education.