A Comparative Study On English Vocabulary Learning Strategies Of Urban And Rural Junior Middle School Students

As a part of English learning strategies,Vocabulary learning strategies refer to behaviors or methods that learners consciously adopt in order to learn and use vocabulary better and faster,and to improve the efficiency of learning and using vocabulary.Studies have shown that the mastery of appropriate and effective vocabulary learning strategies is essential for improving students’ vocabulary learning ability and overall English proficiency.Based on this,this article has done a survey of English vocabulary learning strategies of urban and rural junior middle school students,aiming to compare the similarities and differences in English vocabulary learning strategies of urban and rural junior middle school students,to find problems and put forward effective teaching suggestions.Therefore,this thesis,based on the requirements of students’ key competencies of English discipline and the theory of constructivism and multiple intelligences,made a survey in this respect by using questionnaire and interview.The research participants are500 junior middle school students and eight English teachers from two junior middle school in Yantai City,Shandong Province.The thesis mainly tries to address the following questions:(1)What are the similarities and differences between the urban and rural junior middle school students in terms of the learning concepts of English vocabulary learning strategies?(2)What are the similarities and differences between the urban and rural junior middle school students in terms of the English lexical metacognitive learning strategies?(3)What are the similarities and differences between the urban and rural junior middle school students in terms of the English lexical cognitive learning strategies?Combining quantitative and qualitative research methods,the major findings could be summarized as follows:(1)There are great differences in the concepts of English vocabulary learning strategies.Urban junior middle school students are more inclined to memorize vocabularies in the application,and they believe that they should experience and master the relevant language knowledge in the process of using vocabularies.Rural junior middle school students are more inclined to memorize vocabularies by roting,and they think words need to be memorized one by one and repeated over and over again.(2)There are similarities and differences in the use of metacognitive strategies between the two types of school students.Urban junior middle school students are better than rural junior middle school students in selective attention strategies.The similarity between the two is that the scores of active learning strategies are the lowest,which shows that the urban and rural junior middle school students do not form the awareness of active learning.Junior middle school students in urban and rural areas are accustomed to passively accepting teaching materials and learning content taught by teachers,and fewer students will make their own learning plans to actively learn vocabularies after class.(3)There are similarities and differences in the use of cognitive strategies between the two types of school students.The similarities can be summarized in three points: First,junior middle school students in urban and rural areas don’t often use coding strategies to learn words.Second,they both like to use note-taking strategies and dictionary-seeking strategies.Third,the frequency of use of trial strategies is relatively similar,and they are all at an intermediate level.In short,urban and rural junior middle school students are more willing to choose simple and effective strategies,they don’t like strategies that require middle and complex cognitive level.Their differences are as follows: First,urban junior middle school students prefer to use flexible strategies to help their learning,such as guessing strategies.Rural junior middle school students are different,they tend to use mechanical methods,such as repetitive strategies.Second,when urban junior middle school students encounter problems,they like to rely on their own knowledge and ability to try to solve the problem.When dealing with new words,they usually first judge the meaning of the word based on language knowledge or background information,and then look up the dictionary.However,rural junior middle school students like to use external forces when they encounter problems.They often go directly to the dictionary when they see new words,and least like to use guessing strategies.