A Study Of English Vocabulary Learning Strategies In Chinese Senior High Schools

In recent yeas, great changes have taken place in English teaching and learningfield. The strategies the learners employed in the English learning process arousepeople's great concern. The increased importance has been attached to vocabulary as acomponent of language. The focus has been gradually shifted to the vocabularylearning strategies the learners employed as well. Many researchers abroad have madegreat progress. As for in China, large numbers of researchers have also madeexplorations in this field and some significant achievements have already beenobtained. However, most of the previous related studies are mainly concerned withthose students in a couple of key universities whose majors are English ornon-English. Up till now, few researchers have been done on the senior high schoolstudents. While in senior high schools, vocabulary teaching and learning has alwaysbeen "Time consuming and low efficiency". The students hold the common belief thatvocabulary learning is a big obstacle in English learning. Moreover, about 3000 wordsand 400-500 phrases should be mastered according to Senior High School EnglishCurriculum Standards (Trial Edition) if they want to take part in the entranceexamination to colleges or universities. Consequently, the vocabulary learningstrategies (VLS) concerning senior high school students should be more valued.This study aims to find effective ways to help senior high school students toachieve good results in their vocabulary learning so as to build a solid basis for theirintercultural communication competence.To fulfil the aim, the author first investigated the current situation of vocabularylearning strategies in senior high schools in Weifang. The instruments are onequestionnaire adapted from O'Malley and Chamot and one vocabulary test paper. Thestudy attempts to answer the following questions:1) What are the subjects' beliefs on vocabulary learning?2) What is the subjects'overall pattern of vocabulary learning strategies?3) What specific vocabulary learning strategies are employed by the subjects?4) Are the vocabulary learning strategies used by high-proficiency subjects differentfrom those used by low-proficiency subjects?5) Are vocabulary learning strategies used by the subjects correlated with theirvocabulary size?104 students from Changyi No.1 Middle School and Weifang No.4 MiddleSchool responded to the questionnaire and completed the vocabulary test. Data arecollected and processed by means of SPSS.12.0. The main findings of the research areas follows:1) Overall, the senior high school students emphasize the belief that vocabularyshould be learnt through application. Meanwhile, they attach great importance torote learning;2) Senior high school students employ a variety of vocabulary learning strategiesranging from Metacognitive, Cognitive to Social/affective strategies, but the overalllevel of learning strategies in English vocabulary is lower;3) Significant difference is shown on the usage level between high-proficiency andlow-proficiency students;4) All the cognitive strategies used by the students except Translation positivelycorrelate with their vocabulary size;5) The senior high school students lack effective learning strategies in Englishvocabulary learning process.Based on the results, the author suggested the following strategies for senior highschool students to learn the English vocabulary effectively:Metacognitive strategies1) To set clear, challenging, and realistic goals;2) Consciously examine and monitor the use of vocabulary learning strategies;3) To form the habit of drawing conclusions and making reflections constantly aboutwhat they have learned and performed.Cognitive strategies1) Using flash cards to memorize words and phrases;2) Grouping words in three general categories: semantic fields, phonological sets andgrammatical sets;3) Guessing the meanings of words through context and through word-formation;4) Verifying meaning by checking in a dictionary, and analyzing the word form torecognize relationships between the new word and others already known;5) Using translation strategy to transfer all the knowledge a students has of the L1word (collocations, associations, etc.) onto the L2 equivalent;6) Associating words with the physical world, the word functions, context, personalexperience, etc.;7) Making full use of some proper monolingual dictionaries, such as LongmanEnglish Dictionary.Social/affective strategiesTo actively take part in cooperative activities such as pair work, group discussion,role-play, etc.It is hoped this study can serve as a basis for further study in learning strategiesfor different language learning tasks and at different stages of learning.