An Investigation On Vocabulary Learning Strategies Adopted By Mongolian Students

Vocabulary learning is a basic unit of language,especially a foreign language and efficient learning strategies play a significant part in improving learning efficiency and relieving the students' learning stress.Thus,vocabulary learning strategy is a hot topic in the study of SLA,into which a lot of researchers have made a wealth of outstanding achievements abroad and in China.The researches abroad center around the description of strategy or strategies of particular group of learners,the classification of the vocabulary learning strategies(VLS)and some researchers go to the theoretical framework for evaluation and training,for example,O'Malley and Chamot divided the vocabulary learning strategies into three types,that is,meta-cognitive,cognitive and social or affective.In the last decade Chinese researchers have developed the research of this domain in breadth and depth as well.These studies provide the insight into the general characteristic of the strategy usage of the Chinese students,which have greatly enriched the understanding of the vocabulary learning process of the Chinese students.The Mongolian students in non-English majors are at a relatively unfair disadvantage in English learning,and vocabulary strategies are of great help for them.This study is conducted on the basis of O'Malley and Chamot's framework of learning strategies,which investigated the strategy application of Mongolian non-English majors who were chosen from Baotou Medical College.By means of the questionnaire and interview,the present study tries toinvestigate the general tendency of students' beliefs and the adoption of English vocabulary strategies and probe differences of adopting English vocabulary learning strategies between high achievers and low achievers.In this paper,105 Mongolian second-year students from Baotou Medical College were randomly selected to complete a survey questionnaire and 20 of them participated in the interview.The researcher used Gu&Johnson's Vocabulary Strategies questionnaire(VLQ5)as a main reference.SPSS 18.0 was used to analyze all the collected data.This research was supposed to contribute to making a clear and comprehensive description of English vocabulary strategy application of students at different levels,so that we can better understand individual's needs,and in particular,help them to exploit strategies that may enhance their language learning.The analyses of the data reveal:1)In general,Mongolian students seldom adopt English vocabulary strategies in English learning,and the adoption of social/affective strategies is relatively higher and meta-cognitive strategies are least frequently used among the three general strategies.In detail,social/affective strategies and note-taking strategies are “usually used”,and selection attention,guessing,dictionary use and repetition strategies are “sometimes used”.The general trend may be influenced by their English foundations and Mongolian culture.2)There is great difference between high achievers and low achievers.Specifically,compared with low achievers,high achievers are more frequently using guessing,dictionary use,note-taking and visual coding strategies?From what have been studied above,some implications and suggestions might be provided below:Firstly,the realization of English vocabulary learning strategies should be strengthened and then put them into use consciously.Secondly,the meaning-oriented contextualization processing model should be often practiced to learn English vocabulary.Thirdly,during the process of English vocabulary learning,the model of learning English in English should be advocated,and more western cultures should be cultivated.Meanwhile,the Chinese level should be improved consciously to avoid the misunderstanding of Chinese.