A Study Of Senior High School Students' Vocabulary Learning Strategies

The senior high school English curriculum should place emphasis on raising students' ability to think and to express in English; in particular it should foster their comprehensive ability to use language. However, in many years of her teaching the author found that most of the students are low-achievers in English reading because of their small vocabulary and the small vocabulary mostly results from the lack of vocabulary learning strategies. The thesis analyses the status quo of the Senior One students'English vocabulary learning strategies in Chen Dai Middle School in Jinjiang City through a questionnaire survey and an experimental teaching. The discussion of the problem of teaching and learning vocabulary is then followed by the experimental test on the effectiveness of vocabulary learning strategies. The result shows a significant improvement of student performance in the experimental group and a statistically remarkable difference between the two groups, the experimental group and the controlled group, both in vocabulary size and reading comprehension ability. The positive experimental results have encouraged the author to reemphasize the teaching and learning of vocabulary in senior middle schools through training on vocabulary learning strategies The teachers should made known to or taught the students the idea that English can be better learned by paying special attention to vocabulary learning, and vocabulary can be better learned by appropriate vocabulary learning strategies. Good strategies can help promote the memorization, retention and growth of vocabulary, thus improving not only the reading skills, but also other kills of English and eventually lead to the final aim of English learning:to use English to communicate.