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CHAPTER ONEINTRODUCTION

1.1 Research Background
A language has three elements: pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar, amongwhich vocabulary plays a pivotal role in the realization of the communicative functionof language. For a foreign language learner, he can not be a successful communicatorwith the limited number of vocabulary, even if he has standard pronunciation, and isskillful in grammar. “Without grammar very little can be conveyed; without vocabularynothing can be conveyed” (Wilkins,1972). Vocabulary consists of two parts: passivevocabulary and active vocabulary. In China's College English Syllabus、《大学英语教学大纲》）and the College Teaching Outline for English Majors in Elementary Stage、《高等学校英语专业基础阶段英语教学大纲》），the number of passive words and activewords for students in various grades are specified. Passive vocabulary, which is also called receptive vocabulary, means vocabulary a learner is able to recognize in thereading. Active vocabulary, which is also called productive vocabulary, means thewords for free and practical use. To be exact，the active vocabulary means the wordswhich can be correctly used by the learners in speaking and writing. It is generallybelieved that the total number of passive words a learner possess is much larger thanthat of active words possessed by a learner，because the former only requires learners toknow a word, whereas for the latter, learners are required to master more aspects likespelling，part of speech，collocation, applicable language，and linguistic field. As aresult, learners have to spend more time and energy to leam the active vocabulary.
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1.2 Purpose and Methodology of the Study
The present study focuses on the vocabulary study of Chinese English majors in a211 university——about its development and strategies on the basis of the vocabularyknowledge framework put forward by Richards (1976) and Nation (2001) and thevocabulary learning strategies proposed by O'Malley and Chamot (1990). It aims toinvestigate, identify and analyze the English vocabulary knowledge acquisition andvocabulary learning strategy with the purpose of providing something useful guidancefor the vocabulary learning and teaching of English majors.The study aims to examine the passive and active vocabulary students of Englishmajors by means of self-developed vocabulary tests. The vocabulary tests weredesigned by referring to A General List of Vocabulary for English Majors andVocabulary Levels Test (VLT) created by Nation in 1990 so as to adjust the foreignapproach to the need of students in China. And in order to have detailed results，the testpaper was made up of two parts: one was the test for the passive vocabulary and theother was the test for active vocabulary. And the unique characteristic for tests was thatall the vocabulary was divided into five bands, namely, 2000，4000, 6000，8000 and8000-13000. In addition to the test of vocabulary, students’ vocabulary learningstrategies were also investigated. And the questionnaire applied in this research wasmodeled on Gu and Johnson's format (1996)，a widely used comprehensivequestionnaire，which is rooted from O'Malley and Chamot's framework to understandthe differences in vocabulary learning strategies.The purposes for this paper are listed as follows; the first one is to reveal therelationship between passive words and active words; the second is to sum upthe la本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。