Abstract

Wilkins, the outstanding linguist, once said that without grammar very little can be conveyed while without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed. Clearly, we can see from his words how much the vocabulary matters to the language learning. The mastery of the vocabulary takes a direct effect on the efficiency and outcome of the language learning. Language learners must adopt appropriate vocabulary learning strategies in order to learn the language efficiently with half efforts. However, there are a few researches about vocabulary learning strategies in the past decades. In this paper, firstly, discusses the learning strategies for vocabulary learning strategy is one of its branches. Furthermore, it analyzes the relation between the vocabulary learning strategies and the English proficiency to find out the differences between the successful and less successful learners through a questionnaire, a vocabulary test and an interview. Through the analysis of the data of the questionnaire and the test, it is clearly indicated that subjects commonly accept the dictionary strategies, note-taking strategies and rehearsal strategies but the encoding strategies and activation strategies are less used among students. The note-taking strategies is the most popular one of the seven classifications; while the activation strategies ranks the lowest. In the further step, the data shows that meta-cognitive strategies, encoding strategies and activation strategies are highly related to the vocabulary test score. Guessing, note-taking are positively related to vocabulary test scores and are statistically significant. Consulting a dictionary and rehearsal are found negatively related with the vocabulary size. Rehearsal strategies which are the most popular strategies among the students do not work as effectively as they thought. So, it can be safely concluded that the use of proper vocabulary learning strategies is of much importance. However, each learner ought to adopt the strategies most suitable for himself rather than those the successful learners use.

Key words: vocabulary learning; strategy; survey

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

1. Introduction-1

2. Literature Review-3

2.1 Learning Strategies-3

2.1.2 Classification of Language Learning Strategies-3

2.2 Vocabulary Learning Strategies-4

2.2.1 Classification on Vocabulary Learning Strategies-4

2.2.2 Research on Vocabulary Learning Strategies-5

3. Methodology-8

3.1 Research questions-8

3.2 Subjects-8

3.3 Instruments-8

3.4 Procedure of Data Collection-9

4. Analysis of the Results and Discussion-10

4.1 Descriptive Statistics of Vocabulary Learning Strategy Use-10

4.2 The Correlation between Vocabulary Learning Strategies and the vocabulary test scores-11

4.3 Results of the Interview-11

5. Conclusion-12