A Study On English Vocabulary Learning Strategy Of Rural High School Students

Vocabulary learning strategy attracts increasing attention from the influential researchers abroad and in China in the study of second language acquisition. The researches abroad center around the classification of the vocabulary learning strategy or the description of strategy or strategies of particular groups of learners and some researches go to the theoretical framework for strategies training. A number of theoretical and empirical researches witness the development in the study if the vocabulary learning strategy in China since 1990s, which have greatly enriched the English pedagogical theory and facilitated the students'English vocabulary learning.The present research aims to investigate the general pattern of English vocabulary learning strategy used by some rural high school students. Besides, the application of specific memorization strategies and differences in English vocabulary learning strategy employed between boys and girls are the major concern in this thesis.An interview and a questionnaire are the two instruments in this research. The interview with the good learners and poor learners explores the general beliefs and application of the strategies in a descriptive way. There exists no significant difference between the two groups investigated.A questionnaire, adapted from Gu and Johnson (1996), is tested to 120 students in the rural high school. Their English vocabulary learning strategies are investigated at metacognitive, cognitive and social/affective levels. By using SPSS, the analyses of the data reveal:1. Generally speaking, the investigated students employ a variety of vocabulary learning strategy at metacognitive, cognitive and social/affective levels. The frequency of the three broad categories of vocabulary learning strategy is:cognitive strategy> metacognitive strategy>social/affective strategy.2. Repetition strategy predominates in all the memorization strategies such as association, contextualization and word formation. The infrequently used memorization strategies include grouping and key word.3. There is not an obvious difference between boys and girls in this research, which is not in agreement with the studies done by other researchers. This thesis analyzes these findings respectively, and suggests some pedagogical implications of the research.This dissertation is developed from the following five parts. Part one explains the reasons why the writer undertakes this study and writes this dissertation; part two lays the theoretical foundation for the empirical research; part three describes how the research has been undertaken; part four analyze the data collected in the research; part five draws some conclusion and makes some pedagogical implications for the teachers and the students...