Second-year Non-English Major College Students’ English Vocabulary Learning Strategies

Vocabulary, the basis of language learning, plays an important role in second language acquisition. Up until now, most researchers abroad and at home have been focusing on the classification and description of the vocabulary learning strategies, which is always a fairly hot issue in the field of language teaching and learning.With the development in foreign language teaching and learning, researchers become aware of the importance of the research into the vocabulary learning strategies. Based on the findings of the considerable investigations, the author endeavors to explore the vocabulary learning strategies employed by totally277second-year non-English majors from Yancheng Teachers University and Yancheng Institute of Technology. In addition to the relationship between the vocabulary learning strategies and the achievements of College English Test (Band4), differences in vocabulary learning strategies use are also investigated by using SPSS and such research is conducted by means of several groups:(1) students from two universities;(2) male students and female students;(3) students majoring in Arts and Science;(4) Arts students and non-Arts students;(5) higher achievers and lower achievers. The questionnaire, directly from Gu and Johnson (1996), is relatively comprehensive and the vocabulary learning strategies are investigated at three levels:Beliefs about vocabulary learning, Metacognitive strategies and Cognitive strategies.In this paper, findings are acquired by using SPSS and reveal that:(1) Metacognitive strategies and Cognitive strategies are frequently employed by the second-year non-English majors from different colleges. Most students are good at adopting different kinds of Metacognitive strategies and Cognitive strategies in handling their vocabulary learning;(2) the vocabulary learning strategies and the investigated students’achievements of College English Test (Band4) are significantly correlated;(3) the data analysis from different groups reveals that there exist significant differences in the employment of vocabulary learning strategies.The paper ends by presenting some suggestions both for teaching and for students’ learning as well as recommendations for further study.