A Study Of The Effect Of Vocabulary Learning Strategies On The Non-English Majors’English Writing Competence

Vocabulary learning plays a vital role in language learning, while present college non-English majors have displayed a very low effect in vocabulary learning, presenting various problems, such as grasping a small amount of vocabulary, being unfamiliar with parts of speeches, word formation as well as semantics, etc., which immediately lead to the preoccupation with how to change such situations. Since1970s, many linguists have focused their attention on this field and varieties of researches have been conducted concerning the ways to improve the effect and efficiency of vocabulary learning, namely, VLS. English is made up of several aspects, therefore to measure the learners’ English level somehow depends on these aspects, among which learners’ writing competence is a very typical one. The previous English Band4and6exams have witnessed the poor levels of college non-English majors’ English writing competence through the given writing scores. Of course, many factors together may be blamed for the very low writing competence of college non-English majors, such as ignorance of English grammar, lack of logic, insufficient vocabulary, poor command of word meanings, etc., among which, vocabulary-related factors appear to be especially significant. Since few studies have been done on the relationship between vocabulary learning strategies and English writing competence, this study combines the two together, aiming at finding out some VLS favorable to the improvement of English writing competence.With a quantitative research method, this study takes O’Malley and Chamot’s classification of VLS as the theoretical framework, applying and modifying their questionnaire concerning VLS and finally reaches a questionnaire consisting of29individual items with23cognitive strategies,4meta-cognitive strategies and2social/affective strategies. Thereafter through SPSS (17.0) descriptive statistics analysis, Pearson correlation analysis as well as multiple regression analysis are done concerning VLS and writing scores (competence). The results are generally as follows:1. The overall frequency of VLS used by college non-English majors is not high. Social/affective strategies are most used by students, and cognitive strategies are least used with meta-cognitive strategies used in between.2. The results of Pearson correlation indicate that all the three categories of VLS positively correlate with writing competence, meaning that the more VLS are applied, the higher students’writing scores will be. Among them, meta-cognitive strategies more closely correlate with writing competence than the other two categories.3. After the multiple regression analysis, it is easily seen that meta-cognitive strategies have the strongest predictive power of writing scores, while cognitive strategies have the weakest predictive power of writing scores, even some individual strategies there negatively correlate with writing scores.This thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter One is an introduction, which gives the origin, objective and significance of this study as well as the general structure of this thesis.Chapter Two is the literature review, which looks back on the development of LS as well as VLS in the past forty years, followed by the description of some relevant research findings concerning both VLS and writing.Chapter Three discusses the research methodology, including the theoretical framework of this study as well as the research process.Chapter Four is an analysis of the results and the related discussion, which displays the findings of this study.Chapter Five focuses on the conclusion. A conclusion is drawn by showing the implications, pointing out the limitations and providing suggestive research topics.