A Study On Vocabulary Learning Strategies Used By Junior Middle School Students

Recently,there are great changes in English teaching field in high school.The strategies which the students used in English learning process arouse scholars and teachers' big concern.The increased importance of learning strategies has been attached to vocabulary learning as a component of language.However,the spotlight has been turned to the vocabulary learning strategies gradually and the students employed in addition.Many a scholar abroad has made grand progress while in China,quite a lot of researchers have also completed explorations in this field and some considerable accomplishments have been gained.Nevertheless,most of the earlier studies are mainly focused on universities' students but not the students of middle school where vocabulary learning and teaching is taken seriously.According to research,vocabulary teaching in middle school is regarded as “Time wasting and inefficiency” by teachers while vocabulary learning is considered as “big difficulty” by students.Furthermore,according to the newest English Curriculum Standards more words and phrases are required to be mastered by students.As a result,the vocabulary learning strategies(VLS)concerning middle school students should be more valued.This study aims to find effective ways to help students of middle school to achieve their goals in vocabulary learning.To accomplish this aim,the writer first examined the present situation of vocabulary learning strategies in several middle schools which located in Xilinhot by using questionnaire.The design of this questionnaire is based on the learning strategies theories of O'Malley and Chamot and it mainly focused on the following three aspects: 1)what is the overall situation in the subjects' beliefs on vocabulary learning? 2)What is the overall pattern in subjects' vocabulary learning strategies? 3)Are the vocabulary learning strategies different among female and male subjects?120 students from Grade 9 of No.4 Junior Middle School in Xilinhot responded to the questionnaire and data are collected and processed by means of SPSS.The research lead to the following results: 1)In general,middle school students emphasize the belief that vocabulary should be learnt through application.In the meantime,they attach great importance to rote learning;2)Middle school students use different strategies in vocabulary learning which ranging from Metacognitive,Cognitive to Social/affective strategies,but the overall level is low;3)Significant diversity is shown among different genders on the use of vocabulary learning strategies;Based on the results,the author suggested some strategies for junior middle school students to learn the English vocabulary effectively: It is believed that this study can serve as a foundation for further study in learning strategies for different language learning tasks and at different stages of learning.