A Study On The Relationship Between Senior High School Students’ English Learning Motivation And Vocabulary Learning Strategies

In the 1970 s,linguists began to pay attention to the influence of individual differences on second language acquisition.Learning motivation and learning strategies are two important factors of individual differences,and they have a significant impact on L2 acquisition.There are many studies on learning motivation and learning strategies at home and abroad,but there are few researches on the relationship between English learning motivation and vocabulary learning strategies.The main purpose of the present study is to investigate the relationship between senior high school students’ English learning motivation and vocabulary learning strategies.The research questions are as the following:(1)What is the overall situation of senior high school students’ English vocabulary learning strategies? And what about their learning motivation?(2)Is there any correlation between senior high school students’ English learning motivation and their vocabulary learning strategies?If so,what is it?(3)Are there any differences in English vocabulary learning strategy use between highly motivated students and poorly motivated students? The subjects were 123 senior students including 53 males and 70 females from Yugan Middle School.An English learning motivation questionnaire adopted from Gao Yihong(2003)and an English vocabulary learning strategies questionnaire adopted from Gu and Johnson(1996)were administered to collect data of senior students’ learning motivation and VLS employed by them.And statistical analyses were conducted with SPSS 17.0On the basis of analysis of the collected data,several findings are revealed from the study.First of all,senior high school students’ learning English are motivated by a variety of forces: cultural motivation,instrumental motivation,and situational motivation.But their English learning motivation is at a medium level.The most strong motivation among the three types of learning motivation is cultural motivation,followed by instrumental motivation and situational motivation.Secondly,When learning English vocabulary,senior students employ a great many of vocabulary learning strategies such as cognitive,meta-cognitive,social,and affective strategies.But they do use them sometimes.When encountering new words,among the four categories of vocabulary learning strategies,the most frequent strategies employed by senior students is cognitive strategies,the least frequent strategies is meta-cognitivestrategies.Thirdly,English learning motivation has a positive correlation with vocabulary learning strategies in senior high school.Among the three learning motivations,cultural motivation has the strongest correlation with all the four types of VLS.Fourthly,motive intensity of English learning has a great influence on the choice of vocabulary learning strategies.Senior high school students strongly motivated in English learning employ cognitive strategies and meta-cognitive strategies more frequently than students with a weak motivation.Based on the finding mentioned above,some implications are put forward for English teaching and learning.Firstly,teachers adjust vocabulary teaching methods to maintain and enhance senior high school learners’ cultural motivation,and they also change the philosophy of teaching for examinations.Secondly,English teachers need to create an interesting and supportive learning situation,making senior students happy to learning English.What’s more,English teachers need to try a variety of ways to stimulate intrinsic interest of high school students.Finally,teachers should improve students’ motive intensity in English learning.