An Empirical Study Of The English Vocabulary Learning Strategies Used By Senior High School Students

As a component of language,vocabulary is the foundation of language learning,which is of vital importance to listening,reading,speaking and writing.Important role as vocabulary plays in the English learning process,it is still the obstacle for some students.Therefore,researches on English vocabulary learning strategies are essential for English learning and teaching.Previous studies focused on the vocabulary learning strategies used by college students,but researches on strategies applied by senior high school students are not enough.This thesis,based on previous researches on language learning strategies and vocabulary learning strategies,constructivism learning theory,self-regulation theory and context theory,conducts an experimental study on the training of English vocabulary learning strategies in which 120 senior two high school students from Laiyang No.1 middle school are involved.The classification of learning strategies introduced by O'Malley and Chamot,which consist of meta-cognitive strategies,cognitive strategies and social/affective strategies,is adopted in the study.The research is designed to gain a general insight into students' English vocabulary learning beliefs,the status quo of their application of vocabulary learning strategies as well as how English vocabulary learning strategy training affects students' vocabulary learning performance in senior high school.As is seen from the questionnaires before the training,students prefer the idea that vocabulary cannot be learnt by rote memory,but in fact they still employ repetition strategy in vocabulary learning,and meta-cognitive strategies are less frequently used,with social/affective strategies as the least frequently used.With regard to the meta-cognitive strategies,“selective attention” is the most commonly used strategy.In terms of the cognitive strategies,the most frequently used strategies are as follows: repetition,referring to dictionaries and guessing.As for social/affective strategies,“self motivation” is the most commonly used.Based on the results of the questionnaires and the pre-test,students in the experimental class received a three-month systematic training of vocabulary strategies so as to examine how the English vocabulary learning strategy training affects students' vocabulary learning performance.During the vocabulary strategy training,the author mainly selected the following four strategies for the training: management strategy,association strategy,culture strategy and dictionary strategy.After the training,the students were given a post test and the data were collected.The data shows that after the three months' vocabulary strategy training,students realized the importance of vocabulary learning strategies,and moreover,students in the experimental class used those strategies more frequently than before.By using appropriate vocabulary learning strategies,there was a considerable improvement in students' vocabulary learning performance.Therefore,vocabulary learning strategies can be cultivated through the systematic training and daily teaching infiltration.