A Comparative Study On The English Vocabulary Learning Strategies Of Underachiever And Overachiever In Junior Middle School

Vocabulary is the most solid foundation of language learning;Junior high school is the key period to connect senior high school and primary school.During this period,there is much more learning content with greater difficulty,students' proficiency level is diveided into different grades.The vocabulary learning of junior high school students in China can be promoted by timely discovering the problems of vocabulary learning,fully exploring the advantages of using vocabulary learning strategies to develop rules,and applying the rules to practice.Vocabulary learning is influenced by many factors,including both objective factors(the complexity of vocabulary itself)and subjective factors(the cognitive level of learners and the mastery of vocabulary learning strategies).The most important one among them can be vocabulary learning strategies.Scholars at home and abroad have conducted many studies on English vocabulary learning strategies(O'malley,1990;Knight,1994;Ranalli,2009;Zhang ping,2001;Gao yue,2004;Xu shichang,2011).After searching the foreign language core journals on cnki,it is found that the comparative studies on vocabulary learning strategies are mostly carried out on undergraduates and graduate students,and only few of them are on junior high school students(Zhang ke,2015;Wu xiaohong,2017).Due to the differences in specific situations,research methods,research tools and research design details,the previous research results may not be appropriate for the vocabulary learning of all Chinese junior high school students.This paper selects 840 junior middle school students as the whole research object,then 227 achievers and 227 underachievers are selected out from them through English scores ranking,mordern linguistic appitude test and the information provided by teachers.With Chinese students' English vocabulary learning strategies questionnaire,writer respectively researched the vocabulary learning strategy usage of whole junior school students,overachievers and underachievers,compared some similarities and differences of the strategy usages between overachievers and underachievers.It is hoped that some rules can be obtained from the research,provide references for English vocabulary teaching and learning,guide students to learn to make good use ofvocabulary learning strategies for improving vocabulary learning effect and enhancing the vocabulary teaching and learning performance.The results of this research can be summarized into some points as follows: junior high school students' overall vocabulary learning concept is reasonable,their metacognitive strategy level and cognitive strategy level is above average.Overchievers and underachievers have different concepts of vocabulary learning and metacognitive strategies.However,overachievers' usage level and frequency of metacognitive strategies and cognitive strategies are higher than underachievers' ones.There are some similarities and more differences in the usage of specific strategies.The study suggests that teachers should pay more attention to teaching students how to use vocabulary learning strategies reasonably,help students improve the level of strategy use and enhance their cognitive ability of vocabulary learning,and develop the good habit of using strategies to solve problems.Students should learn how to learn during learning vocabulary knowledge.They should also learn to make study proposals,organize and arrange learning activities,improve English vocabulary learning level and promote the continuous progress of learning ability through exposure to vocabulary learning strategies,establishment of correct concept on vocabulary learning and usage of reasonable vocabulary learning strategies.Due to the limitations of subjective and objective conditions,this study mainly has three shortcomings:(1)the dimensions and item setting of the questionnaire may not be comprehensive;(2)the sample size is large without sufficient attention to individual differences;(3)the research design and data analysis still need to be strengthened because of author's limited theoretical leve.This study is not only a comparative study of achievers and underachievers,but also a confirmatory study of previous research results.It is hoped that more researchers will pay attention to the non-intellectual factors of language learning in primary and secondary school students in the future.