Research On English Vocabulary Learning Strategy In Junior High School

M. McCarthy(1990) indicates, "No matter how good one's grammar is and how beautiful one's pronunciation is, but if one has no adequate vocabulary to express one's own feelings or to understand others' opinions, one still cannot communicate with others in this language". Vocabulary is the most important one of the three major components that constitute English language, it is the foundation of any kind of communication. However, vocabulary learning is the most difficult task in students' study. It is, therefore, especially important to study vocabulary learning strategies and the teaching of vocabulary learning strategies.In order to maximize the practicality and validity of the training model, the researcher has divided the project into three phases: pre-training, training, and post-training. In the pre-training phase, a survey is conducted to investigate into the students' beliefs in English vocabulary learning and their use of vocabulary learning strategies. Based on the research findings of the first phase, a detailed plan for the strategy training program is designed, which has the meta-cognitive strategies as the major target items and some cognitive and social/affective strategies are chosen as the supplementary ones. In the training phase, 46 Junior 1 students from Tumote School in Huhhot are used as the subjects receiving the planned training for as long as one school year in order to testify the validity of the training model. In the post-training phase, data of the training program are collected and analyzed as a basis for a detailed discussion on the merits and demerits of the model in hopes of throwing some insights into the future research.The research has the following major findings: 1) The vocabulary learning strategy training has a positive effect on improving the Junior 1 students' vocabulary learning. The strategy training program helps enhance their strategy consciousness and frequency of strategy use. 2) It is practical and effective to train the students in the meta-cognitive strategies with some cognitive and social/affective strategies as supplementary ones. 3) The vocabulary strategy training helps both the high-mark group students and the low-mark group students to improve their marks.