An Empirical Study On Chinese Vocabulary Learning Strategies And Depth Of Vocabulary Knowledge Acquisition Of Elementary-Level Korean Students

Recently, more and more foreigners start to learn Chinese language, among whom Korean students are the representatives of the mainstream Chinese learners consisted of multiple groups. Though a large scale of relative studies have been conducted, there are comparatively few empirical studies on Chinese vocabulary learning strategies and the depth of vocabulary knowledge acquisition, especially one focusing on different groups of elementary-level Korean students.This study aims to find out these points:(1) The employment condition of their vocabulary learning strategies;(2) The level of their depth of vocabulary knowledge;(3) The correlation between vocabulary learning strategy and depth of vocabulary knowledge.The subjects of this study consist of92Korean students from3groups:Nanjing University in China, Nanjing University of Science and Technology in China, and Tongmyong University/Myongji University in Korea. The three groups concern about whether the students are in the target language environment or not; whether the students are of college students or not.The two research instruments designed by myself on the bases of Chinese characteristics in this study is a questionnaire on vocabulary learning strategies, based on O’Malley&Chamot’s framework of learning strategies and Gu&Johnson’s questionnaire on English vocabulary learning strategies, and a test on the depth of vocabulary knowledge, adopting the format of Word Association Test.The data collected is analyzed by SPSS20.0through the methods of descriptive statistics (mean value, standard deviation), ANOVA, T-test, Kruskal-Wallis H, Mann-Whitney U, Tamhane’s T2, LSD, Pearson correlation, and regression analysis.The results show that:(1) The using frequency of vocabulary learning strategies is cognitive, followed by metacognitive, memory and social-affective strategies. The groups exhibit significant differences in all the learning strategies except the cognitive strategies. Among them, the two college groups (students from Nanjing University and students from two universities in Korea) use different strategies more frequently than the social group from Nanjing University of Science and Technology.(2) The subjects’ proficiency of different vocabulary knowledge is basic meaning, followed by non-baisic meaning, verb-object, modifier-head and verb-complement. Generally speaking, the two college groups gain a better understanding of different vocabulary knowledge. The language environments influence a lot on the knowledge of verb-complement and students in China achieve better in this kind of vocabulary knowledge.(3) Vocabulary learning strategies have a close correlation with the students’ proficiency of depth of vocabulary knowledge. More specifically, the social-affective strategies relate but not significantly to the depth of knowledge. Cognitive and memory strategies together can explain about32.4%of the variation in Chinese vocabulary achievement.(4) The students of high-score use different strategies to learn Chinese vocabulary more frequently than the ones of low-score.Enlightenments from the analysis above:(1) Teachers should pay more attention to the teaching of vocabulary learning strategies and encourage the learners to try different kinds of related learning strategies.(2) Teachers should focus not only on the teaching of the basic meanings of the vocabulary but also the other knowledge of the particular words.(3) Teachers should teach students in accordance with their aptitude, individual differences and their language level.