A Survey Of Senior High Students’English Vocabulary Knowledge

Research on vocabulary acquisition is an essential component of the research of second language acquisition, and researchers have realized the importance of vocabulary in comprehending and producing the second language. But it should be pointed out that the learning of vocabulary is not a matter of "yes" or "no", and it is not a process of increasing one’s size of vocabulary, either. In fact, the learning of vocabulary is a process in which students widen and deepen their vocabulary knowledge gradually. A growing number of researches have acknowledged that vocabulary knowledge essentially is a multidimensional knowledge and it can be further divided into meta-vocabulary knowledge, breadth of vocabulary knowledge as well as depth of vocabulary knowledge. On the one hand, learners should learn different types of sub-knowledge about each individual word they learn; on the other hand, they should have some general idea about the English vocabulary. The present study is based on the vocabulary framework proposed by Ma Guanghui, the depth of vocabulary knowledge measure (DVK), the vocabulary knowledge scale (VKS) and a questionnaire related to meta-vocabulary knowledge, which are used as instruments to measure students’vocabulary knowledge.150subjects are chosen from three senior high schools in Wuhan, Hubei province: Wuhan No.1Middle School, Huangpi No.1Middle School and Middle School Attached to HUST. Each subject is asked to finish a set of papers consisted of a questionnaire and two tests so as to find out how well the subjects have known about the meta-vocabulary knowledge and depth of vocabulary knowledge, and the relationship between these two types of vocabulary knowledge.Having analyzed the subjects’scores on the test papers, it is found that:1) Senior high students have acquired some meta-vocabulary knowledge in their learning though they haven’t learned this kind of knowledge systematically and professionally. However, students’meta-vocabulary knowledge on sound, form, meaning and use is unevenly distributed, with better meta-knowledge on form and meaning.2) Senior high students’depth of vocabulary knowledge is quite limited. For the polysemous words that they have learned, most students could only acquire one basic conceptual meaning and they are quite weak in the knowledge of word collocations and different meanings of a particular target word. But comparatively speaking, students’ knowledge on meaning is better than knowledge on use of the words.3) Students’meta-vocabulary knowledge is significantly related to the depth of vocabulary knowledge. Therefore, the learning of meta-vocabulary knowledge can promote students’learning of depth of vocabulary knowledge and improve the quality of the words they have learned.According to the results of the study, the author provides some teaching implications and suggestions. First of all, teachers and learners should change the situation in which learners and teachers focus mainly on the quantity of vocabulary rather than the quality. Second, teachers and learners should consider all of the four aspects, i.e. sound, form, meaning and use, in the vocabulary learning. And the learning of a particular word should start with the learning of the basic conceptual meaning and then further explore its collocation, register, variation, etc. Last but not least, learners should learn some meta-vocabulary knowledge so as to monitor their own vocabulary learning and improve the outcomes of vocabulary learning.