A Study On Depth Of Vocabulary Knowledge Acquisition Of Non-English Major Undergraduates

Since the1980s, more and more researchers realize the importance of vocabularylearning. Depth of vocabulary knowledge, one of the most important aspects ofvocabulary, plays an important role in students’ vocabulary acquisition. Therefore, it’snecessary and important to help teachers and students better understand the overalldepth of vocabulary knowledge acquisition.The present study examined the depth of vocabulary knowledge held by150non-English major sophomores in Jiangxi normal university. All of them finished abackground questionnaire and a test paper adapted from Read (1998), that is, theWord Associates Test. It includes40frequently used adjectives as tested words, so asto measure the collocation and synonym in the present study. On the whole, the thesisexamined the following three aspects:(1) the overall situation of the depth ofvocabulary knowledge;(2) the relationships between the different types of depth ofvocabulary knowledge;(3) the differences in the depth of vocabulary knowledgebetween good and poor learners, and those between male and female learners. All thedata were analyzed by SPSS17.0.The findings of this study were as follows:(1) the overall situation of the depthof vocabulary knowledge is far from satisfactory. The collocational knowledge isbetter acquired than synonym knowledge. The subjects’ depth of vocabularyknowledge doesn’t reach the passing level.(2) The total vocabulary knowledge (TVK)is significantly related with the two aspects of vocabulary knowledge, and the twotypes of vocabulary knowledge are also correlated with each other. But the correlationbetween TVK and synonym knowledge, and these between TVK and collocationknowledge is stronger than these between synonym and collocation.(3) As for thegood and poor learners, there are great differences between good and poor learners inthe acquisition of depth of vocabulary knowledge. And the differences of the totaldepth of vocabulary knowledge are more significant than those of synonym andcollocation knowledge.(4) The means of female subjects are higher than that of malelearners in the different aspects of knowledge. The gap between female learners islarger than that of male.On the basis of the findings above, suggestions on how to improve vocabulary knowledge of frequently used words by teaching and learning are put forward andimplications on future researches are also presented. Firstly, further researches onmore varied samples are badly needed if the present research results are to be appliedto any populations. Secondly, future research should involve more aspects ofvocabulary knowledge in its design to better understand what contribution variousaspects of depth of vocabulary knowledge make to specific language skill. I shouldalso explore how the relationship between depth and breadth of vocabularyknowledge changes under different conditions. Thirdly, further research would benefitfrom investigating the relationship between depth of vocabulary knowledge and otheraspects such as language proficiency, reading comprehension and specific languageskills.