A Study On Senior High School Students’ Incidental Vocabulary Learning Strategies

It is universally acknowledged that vocabulary plays an extremelyimportant role in the process of second language learning. Although manyEnglish learners in China realize that vocabulary learning is the basic task ofsecond language learning, it is quite a headache to them. The vocabularylearning in class is essential for English learners, while it is not the only wayto acquire it. Since vocabulary instruction in the classroom cannot cover alarge amount of words, incidental vocabulary learning through oralconversation, reading, or listening becomes more effective. The population ofhigh school students who learn English as a foreign language is large in China,which arouses the writer’s interests in their English study. Though researchesin the field of vocabulary studies and learning strategies are abundant,research into high school students’ incidental vocabulary learning strategiesstill remains comparatively sparse. This study has theoretical and practicalimplications for English learning and teaching.This thesis aims to find out what kinds of vocabulary learning strategieshigh school students use most frequently in the process of incidentalvocabulary learning and whether there is any difference of strategies usebetween high proficiency and low proficiency students, between male andfemale students. The participants in this experiment are from two parallelclasses of Grade two in a key high school in Chongqing. Among them, thereare54girls and50boys. In order to ensure the participants suitable for the study, two vocabulary level tests adopted from Nation (1990), the receptivevocabulary test and the productive vocabulary test are delivered to them priorto the experiment. Two days later, the students are asked to read two passagesand finish the comprehension tasks. After that, a target word test is carried outto identify every subject’s incidental vocabulary learning ability and sevendays later, a post test is launched to test subjects’ retention of incidentalvocabulary learning. In light of the results, subjects are divided into twogroups: high proficiency group and low proficiency group. Two days after thepost test, the questionnaire based on Schmitt’s framework (2002) is handedout to see which vocabulary learning strategy the subjects take and then theraw data are processed and analyzed with SPSS software. Some findings canbe drawn from the study:Firstly, the results of subjects’ attitudes towards vocabulary learning showthat all the subjects do admit the crucial role of vocabulary in English learning,while some of them do not believe in the effectiveness of incidentalvocabulary learning and some of them depend on their teacher in thevocabulary learning process.Secondly, specifically, asking classmates for Chinese meaning is the mostfrequently used strategy by high school students and grouping words togetherwith a story is the least commonly employed one in the vocabulary learningprocess. Meanwhile, it should also be noticed that subjects show less interestin social strategies for consolidation and metacognitive strategies in general. The last finding is that significant difference exists in the use of specificstrategies between high proficiency students and low proficiency students,especially in analyzing words with part of speech, analyzing words withaffixes and roots, use of semantic maps for remembering and use ofEnglish-language media. In addition, significant difference is also found inmacro-perspective, that is, big difference lies between high proficiencystudents and low proficiency students in the usage of determination strategiesand metacognitive strategies, discovery strategies and consolidation strategies.However, no significant difference of strategy use can be found between malestudents and female students.The present study gives enlightment to high school English teaching andlearning. Teachers need to encourage independent study and the belief ofincidental vocabulary learning should be cultivated. It is also necessary forteachers to emphasize the importance of the employment of metacognitivestrategies, such as use of English-language media, which can expand thevocabulary size of students. Furthermore, teachers should provide more accessto vocabulary strategies and more systematic instructions should be introducedto high school students. As for the learners, the consciousness of applyingvocabulary strategies should be raised among low proficiency students. Somepractices on those strategies are encouraged to enhance the awareness ofincidental vocabulary learning, which is essential for autonomous learning.