| It is well known that vocabulary takes a dominant position in a language and plays a critical part in language teaching and learning. It is the basis of the five skills of a language (listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translating). Wilkins has also said:"Were it not for grammar, a lot of things can't be expressed; however, if there were no words, we couldn't express anything"(Wilkins, 1976: 89). Though vocabulary is so important, it has always been one of the most difficult parts in language learning for students in secondary vocational school. In order to help these students in secondary school to learn English vocabulary more effectively and efficiently, it is necessary to investigate what they often do with vocabulary in their vocabulary learning process. That is, it is quite necessary to explore what vocabulary learning strategies students really adopt in English vocabulary learning process.This research is based on the theory of O'Malley and Chamot's vocabulary learning strategies classification, which is made a little revision by the author. Meta-cognitive strategies in this research are Goal-setting, Self-monitoring and Self-evaluation, while cognitive strategies are Repetition, Practicing, Collocating, Grouping, Guessing, Dictionary using, Contextualization, Rote-learning and Association. Social/affective strategies refers to cooperation and question for clarification.The subjects in this research are 87 students in Grade 2010 randomly chosen from Xinxiang secondary vocational school. Their English vocabulary learning beliefs and strategies are investigated by a questionnaire and an interview. Based on the results of the questionnaire and the interview, the author selected some deep-processing strategies as Vocabulary Learning Strategies Training (VLS training): Guessing Strategy, Word-formation Strategy, Grouping Strategy, Association Strategy, Comparison Strategy and Contextualization Strategy. To find out the effects of the training on students' vocabulary leaning efficiency, two vocabulary tests were delivered to the students before the VLS training and after the VLS training respectively.The aim of this research is to discover (1) What are the frequently used vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) among students in secondary vocational school? (2) What are the effects of VLS training on improving their English vocabulary learning? The author hopes the finding can help teachers in secondary vocational school have a better sense of the individual needs of their students and a better understanding of vocabulary learning strategies guiding to students. The results show that effective vocabulary leaning strategies have a great effect on improvement of English vocabulary learning.The thesis is composed of following five chapters. Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction to the motivations and objectives of the thesis and points out the necessity of using learning strategies in the process of vocabulary learning in order to improve students'vocabulary learning efficiency. In addition, it briefs the overall structure of the paper. Chapter 2 presents the literature review on previous studies on learning strategies, vocabulary learning strategies as well as strategy training, which provides theoretical support for this paper. Chapter 3 outlines the research objectives and design of the study, including research question, research subjects, research methods and procedure and VLS training. The author also introduces three kinds of methods, that is, a questionnaire, an interview and vocabulary tests, with a specific description of research time, subjects and aims. Chapter 4 demonstrates the results and analysis of the questionnaires, the interviews, vocabulary tests and VLS training. Chapter 5 is the summary of the whole research, which mentions major findings in this research, some pedagogical implications for English vocabulary teaching and learning, with limitation of the research and the expectation for the future research as the last. |
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