A Study Of Vocabulary Learning Strategies

The thesis reports a survey of vocabulary learning strategies used by senior one students in five high schools in Beijing. It explores the vocabulary learning strategies used by the senior one students and identifies the most and least frequently used strategies, and finally finds out why they favor certain strategies over others. The present study aims at providing strategy use profiles for those senior high school teachers who are interested in strategy training.A vocabulary learning strategy questionnaire consisting of forty-six questions and semi-structured interview are the basic instruments in the study. The questionnaire comes from that of Schmitt's (1997) and Yoshimitsu's (1999) with some adaptations. The data are analyzed with the help of SPSS according to Schmitt's (1997) taxonomy of vocabulary learning strategies.The results show that the level of vocabulary strategy use by the sampled senior one students is only moderate, averaging 2.81. Among the four categories investigated, cognitive strategies are the most frequently used, followed by memory strategies, metacognitive strategies, and social strategies. Six individual vocabulary learning strategies are reported as the most frequently used ones, and eleven are reported as the least frequently used ones. The senior one students favor those cognitively less demanding strategies, and they often employ certain strategies for convenience. The results may shed some light on the instruction and further studies in this field byproposing some questions for future researches based on the research findings.