A Comparative Study Of English Vocabulary Learning Strategies Adopted By Han And Ethnic Minority English-major Undergraduates

Since the late 1970 s, research on English vocabulary learning strategies has been one of the important studies in the field of second language acquisition. Recently, a considerable number of researchers at home and abroad have made great achievements in studying vocabulary learning strategies, marking a true explosion in this field. However, there is an inadequate comparative research on English vocabulary learning strategies between Han and ethnic minority learners.This study aimed to explore the similarities and differences in English vocabulary learning strategies adopted by Han and bilingual/monolingual ethnic minority English majors. The present study employed an adapted questionnaire to carry out a comparative study on vocabulary learning strategies adopted by 214 Han and ethnic minority English majors from three universities in Yunnan Province, and 12 of them were interviewed. SPSS 17.0 was used to collect data and descriptive analysis and one-way ANOVA were conducted to analyze the data.The major findings were shown as follows: firstly, the most frequently adopted strategies for English vocabulary learning by Han English majors were reliance strategies, followed by metacognitive, cognitive and social/affective strategies. In the use of social/affective strategies, inquiry strategies were “usually used” and the other strategies were “sometimes used”.Secondly, as for bilingual ethnic minority students, metacognitive strategies were the most frequently used to learn English vocabulary, which were not regularly used by monolingual groups. Monolingual learners were most inclined to employ cognitive strategies. In addition, inquiry strategies were “usually used” and the other strategies were “sometimes used” by bilingual students. For the group of monolingual ethnic students, metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies, social/affective strategies,reliance strategies and their subcategories were “sometimes used”.Thirdly, Han and ethnic minority English majors adopted a wide range of cognitive strategies. Besides, bilingual learners used more metacognitive strategies than monolingual peers. Compared with bilingual learners, Han students relied on their mother tongue more frequently. There were no differences revealed in the adoption of cognitive and social/affective strategies between Han and ethnic minority groups, but significant differences were found in such subcategories as dictionary use, grouping, contextualization and cooperation.In the light of the above findings, implications for English vocabulary teaching and learning were put forward in the last part. The present study was only a tentative one, whose findings need to be confirmed and complemented by further research. Therefore, suggestions of the study were offered in hope of improving the efficiency of English-major undergraduates’ vocabulary learning.