An Investigation On English Vocabulary Learning Strategies Of Non-english Majors

Vocabulary is one of the basic elements of language,vocabulary learning is the basis of language learning,mastering the vocabulary learning strategies will greatly improve the efficiency of English vocabulary learning,which will lay the foundation for language learning.Because of time limited,the heavy task of examination and the lack of professional guidance and so on,non-English major college students have difficulties in language learning,mastering and using vocabulary learning strategies which can help non-English major college students to learn vocabularies well and improve the efficiency of English learning and learning effect.In this paper,the author summarizes the previous studies of English vocabulary learning strategies and finds the vocabulary learning strategy questionnaire used by the domestic researches are mostly taken from the foreign scholars.Most of the studies have chosen students of a certain college as research subjects,and comparative study of vocabulary learning strategies based on different types of college students is still rare.This research investigates the overall use of vocabulary learning strategies and compares the differences in the use of vocabulary learning strategies from six different dimensions by comparing the non-English majors of three different types of institutions.Then it analyzes the reasons of the differences and puts forwards some suggestions for developing vocabulary learning strategies awareness and training vocabulary learning strategies.In addition,this research verifies the effectiveness of O'Malley and Chamot's(1990)questionnaire for measuring Chinese students' abilities of using vocabulary learning strategies and revises O'Malley and Chamot's(1990)questionnaire based on quantitative and qualitative research to form a set of vocabulary learning strategy questionnaire that suits for the learning characteristics of Chinese students.This study draws the following results:(1)The overall use levels of English vocabulary learning strategies of non-English majors is very high and the consciousness of using vocabulary learning strategies is strong.Among them,the use frequency of social / emotion vocabulary learning strategies are the highest and the use frequency of meta cognitive vocabulary learning strategy is the lowest.(2)In addition to paying attention to key words,associating according to the sound,shape,meaning,synonyms or synonyms and other eight strategies,the overall use frequency of girls in the vocabulary learning strategies are higher than that of boys and girls are better at using vocabulary learn strategies than boys.(3)The older students use vocabulary learning strategies higher than the average age of the younger students use vocabulary learning strategies in word root,word form,word meaning,word pronunciation and extracurricular reading,a total of eight items.As for the average of the rest of the vocabulary learning strategies,younger students use learning strategies more frequently than older students.The author believes that these two aspects have certain implications for the future research of vocabulary learning strategies.(4)Different origins have significant influence on the use of vocabulary learning strategies and the frequency of using the vocabulary learning strategies by urban students is significantly higher than that by students from town and rural.(5)Among all the investigated vocabulary learning strategies,only six vocabulary learning strategies show that science students use vocabulary learning strategies more frequently than liberal arts students do.The average of rest of the other strategies suggests that liberal art students use vocabulary learning strategies more frequently than the science students do.According to independent sample T test,there are three significant differences in different majors in the use of vocabulary learning strategies: “When I learn English,I will cooperate with others to learn the words.When I learn English vocabulary,I will listen to the songs.When I learn English vocabulary,I will spell the words over and over.” The author hopes this finding can provide help for further research.(6)By investigating and analyzing the above questions,the author found that the poor performance of the students tend to rote memorization of vocabulary learning.When they meet a new word,they used to refer to mobile phone software.The frequency of using the vocabulary learning strategies by the good students is higher than that of poor students.(7)Three schools have significant differences in the scores of the use of vocabulary learning strategies.In general,the students of Harbin Institute of Technology use the most types and the highest frequency of vocabulary learning strategies,followed by Harbin Normal University.The students of Harbin Guangsha College use vocabulary learning strategies is relatively low.The results of this research have a certain reference and inspiration for teachers and students,so as to serve as a reference for non-English majors in English vocabulary learning and vocabulary teaching.In addition,the author also finds the limitations of this research in the course of the research.By combining the main findings and the limitations of the research in this paper,the author puts forward relevant suggestions for future research.