Grade Students In English Vocabulary Learning Strategies Survey

Based on O'Malley & Chamot's (1990) and Gu & John's (1996) catalogues of vocabulary-learning strategies, the author of this thesis designed a vocabulary-learning strategy questionnaire which was administered to 300 students in a key vocational school in an attempt to investigate into the following questions: (1) What is the general picture of the vocational school students using the vocabulary-learning strategies in learning English? (2) How do boys and girls differ in their use of the vocabulary-learning strategies? (3 )How are the vocabulary-learning strategies used by the better learners different from those used by the slower learners? (4) Are vocabulary-learning strategies used by students correlated with their performance in vocabulary tests? The main findings are as follows: 1) On the whole, vocational school students have sound and scientific vocabulary-learning beliefs and employ a variety of vocabulary-learning strategies ranging from Meta-cognitive, Cognitive to Social/affective strategies, but the overall level of learning strategies in English vocabulary is lower, belonging to junior strategy users , mediate strategy users or the in-betweens; 2) There are no significant differences in beliefs and the overall application of vocabulary learning strategies between the boys and the girls. The girls apply meta-cognitive strategies more often than the boys, but a significant difference does exist in the specific strategy of "contextualization", the girls prefer it. As for the application of social/affective strategies, there exits a difference between boys and girls, but never reaches to the significant level.3) Difference is shown on the overall level of usage between the better learners and the slower learners, which hasn't reached to the significant level. In terms of the application of each specific strategy, the better learners not only employ more strategies but also use them more frequently than the slower learners. The better learners are more skilled in using dictionaries and applying strategies such as interfering, word formation, contextualization, grouping, association and so on. As for the application of social/affective strategies, there exits a difference between the better learners and the slower learners, but never reaches to the significant level; 4) All the meta-cognitive strategies used by the students positively correlate with students' performance in vocabulary tests and the correlation is positively significant except self-initiation strategy. To be specific, of the fifteen cognitive strategies, ten have positive correlation with performance in vocabulary tests and over half significant, which means both the meta-cognitive strategies and the specific cognitive strategies have effective influence upon vocabulary learning.Based on the description and analysis of the outcomes of the survey, several teaching cases of vocabulary- learning strategies are provided for vocational students.