A Brief Study On English Vocabulary Learning Strategies Among Senior School Students

Vocabulary learning occupies a vital role in English learning process.For many Chinese EFL students,vocabulary is so essential and fundamental a factor in the acquisition of a language.The most important way to build vocabulary is learners using strategies independently of a teacher.The purpose of this survey is to investigate the current vocabulary teaching perception and strategies among the teachers in senior schools,the frequency of students' application of different vocabulary learning strategies and at last the relationship between the application of vocabulary learning strategies and their vocabulary learning achievements.The research subjects are twenty-nine English teachers and one hundred and seventy nine students in Xiaoshan High School.Instruments used in this survey study are one interview,one 17-item questionnaire adapted from Schmitt's taxonomy for vocabulary learning strategies,and two English vocabulary proficiency tests,so that both quantitative and qualitative analyses could be conducted.Percentages,frequencies,and means were used to analyze the data.This study also conducted a further application of vocabulary learning strategies to the students,which lasted 3 months,with the major focus on meta-cognitive strategies that had been found in the questionnaire as the least frequently used strategies.The research findings indicate that senior school teachers have a clear awareness of the significance of teaching vocabulary learning strategies.However,the strategies used and taught by the senior school teachers are currently confined in some common and traditional strategies.The analysis of the questionnaire results analysis illustrates that senior school students are almost medium strategy users for learning vocabulary.Memory strategies have occupied the lion's share of attention among the learning strategies,and then follow the cognitive strategies,determination strategies and social strategies.Only the meta-cognitive strategies fall to the low frequency application strategies.Based on three-month training and the results of two language proficiency tests,there exists a positive and effective relationship between the application of vocabulary learning strategies and the students' vocabulary learning achievements.It is expected that these findings will suggest the direction for the current vocabulary teaching and learning in China.