A Study On The Correlation Between Senior High School Students' Language Self-efficacy And Vocabulary Learning Strategies

English language self-efficacy is the belief of learners in their capabilities to learn or perform behaviors in English learning tasks.Bandura(1986)pointed that self-efficacy can greatly influence the academic achievements of a person through cognitive,motivational,affective and selection processes.Moreover,the study of educational psychology indicates that learner's self-efficacy can significantly affect the use of learning strategies.Zimmerman(2001)pointed out that learners with high self-efficacy are more responsible for their learning,such as using learning strategies in the learning process.The research of Wuxia and Wangqiang(1998)showed that the application of vocabulary learning strategies could greatly promote vocabulary learning,learners should master and use various vocabulary learning strategies flexibly to make their vocabulary learning better.So it is thus clear that the "self-efficacy" and "learning strategies" are essential in the process of English language learning in order to achieve academic success.However,the research on the relationship between learning efficiency and learning strategies is really rare,most of which took the Colleges students as the research object not the middle school students.This thesis aims to answer the following questions:(1)What is the level of students' English learning self-efficacy? Is there significant grade or gender difference in English learning self-efficacy?(2)What is the level of students' usage of English vocabulary learning strategies? Is there significant grade or gender difference in the usage of English vocabulary learning strategies?(3)Is there any correlation between English learning self-efficacy and English vocabulary learning strategies of senior high school students? What impact happens between them?(4)What's the difference of the usage of English vocabulary learning strategies between students with high English learning self-efficacy and students with low English learning self-efficacy?This study issued two questionnaires to 330 students of a senior high school in Henan province of China.SPSS was adopted as the data analysis device to find out the relationship between language self-efficacy and vocabulary learning strategies,including the reliability assessment,descriptive analysis,comparison of means,Pearson correlation analysis and so on.The statistical results show:(1)Students are in middle level of the language self-efficacy and there is no significant grade difference.However there is a significant gender difference that female students tend to have higher language self-efficacy than male student.(2)Senior high school students use vocabulary learning strategies in middle level.Significant grade difference only exists between Senior Two and Senior Three,but there is no significant gender difference in using vocabulary learning strategies.(3)Language self-efficacy is positively related to the use of vocabulary learning strategies of the students.The regression analysis also showed that assessment of ability to deal with difficulties in English study has great predictive effect on metacognitive strategies and social affective strategies,the sense of self-confidence for goal has the significant predictive effect on resource management strategy,and the sense of course-competence has a significant predictive effect on cognitive strategies.(4)Students with high English learning self-efficacy tend to use more strategies in metacognitive,cognitive,social and affective and resource management strategies than students with low English learning self-efficacy,and they have significant difference in the use of planning learning strategies,self-monitoring strategy,self-regulation strategy,classification strategy,dictionary strategy and so on.According to analysis of the result,the author attempts to put forward some advice to improve students' English self-efficacy and enhance their awareness of vocabulary learning strategies.The main suggestions are as follows:(1)teachers should set reasonable goals for students to make them have more chances to experience success;(2)students are taught to attribute in a positive way;(3)teachers need to provide role models for the students at different levels and positive feedback;(4)teachers need to attach importance to cultivate students' awareness of vocabulary learning strategies and providing guidance about vocabulary learning strategies,etc,.