An Experimental Study On English Majors’ Vocabulary Learning Strategies And Depth Of Vocabulary Knowledge

With the development of science and technology, communication among people isbecoming more and more frequent. Thus a good command of vocabulary knowledgeappears more important to help people get access to information which is necessary anduseful. It is generally acknowledged by language researchers that vocabulary learningplays an extremely crucial role in Second Language Acquisition. In essence, depth ofvocabulary knowledge, or how well a word is known may determine a learner’svocabulary capacity. Among all the factors that may affect vocabulary acquisitionoutcomes, the use of vocabulary learning strategy is one of the most important.Under this background, the thesis carried out an experimental study of vocabularylearning strategies and depth of vocabulary knowledge.158English majors from HezeUniversity took part in the investigation by finishing a questionnaire with reference toGu and Johnson’s (1996), and a test paper adapted from Read’s (1998) WordAssociation Test. The thesis investigated the students’ overall pattern of vocabularylearning strategies and their overall acquisition of depth of vocabulary knowledge, andfurther investigated the correlation between students’ vocabulary learning strategies anddepth of vocabulary knowledge. After the data were collected, processed and analyzedwith SPSS, the following findings were obtained:Firstly, the results suggest that English majors employ a wide variety of vocabularylearning strategies at metacognitive, cognitive dimensions in their vocabulary learningprocess. Compared with these strategies, social/affective strategies are seldom used bythe students. The most frequently used vocabulary learning strategies are selectiveattention, self-management, word formation, dictionary use, note-taking and affectivecontrol, while plan making, reviewing&testing, grouping, and social activities are notfrequently used.Secondly, the results of the depth of vocabulary knowledge test show that theparticipants’ depth of vocabulary knowledge is satisfactory in general. More than half ofthe students get middle or middle-high scores, that is, they get a comparatively goodcommand of English. However, there is still one fifth students got the scores of lowlevel, namely, under passing grade.Thirdly, the results indicate that most strategies are significantly correlated withdepth of vocabulary knowledge. All the categories of metacognitive strategies have significant positive correlation with depth of vocabulary knowledge. At cognitive level,guessing strategy, dictionary use strategy, note-taking strategy and association strategyhave significant positive correlation with the depth of vocabulary knowledge. Atsocial/affective level, affective control correlates with vocabulary learning while socialactivities strategy has no correlation with the depth of vocabulary knowledge.The findings of the present study can help English teachers better understand theEnglish majors’ overall depth of vocabulary knowledge acquisition and their use ofvocabulary learning strategies. The results of the relationship between depth ofvocabulary knowledge and vocabulary learning strategies can shed light onsecond/foreign language teaching and learning practice.Finally, suggestions on how to enhance English majors’ depth of vocabularyknowledge and on how to train their vocabulary learning strategies are presented.Suggestions for future studies are also presented in the thesis.