A Study On Senior Middle School Students' English Vocabulary Learning Beliefs And Strategies

Vocabulary is widely considered as an important component of second language proficiency. The National English Curriculum Standard has set a higher requirement for high school students especially on vocabulary. However, it is common to hear complaints from students that they forget almost all new words soon after they learn them. This thesis intends to investigate the beliefs possessed and the vocabulary strategies employed by high school students. The aims of the research are to find out: (a) the overall patterns of vocabulary beliefs held and strategies employed by high school students; b) the correlation between the vocabulary learning strategies and the learners' vocabulary scores; (c) the difference between high-proficiency and low-proficiency students in vocabulary belief and strategy use.The subjects are 117 senior two art students from Kunming No 14 Middle School of Yunnan. A vocabulary test and a vocabulary learning strategy questionnaire are used for data collection. The data are put into the computer and analyzed with the software SPSS.The major findings of this research are as follows:1. The present study indicates that high school students have changed the traditional belief that learning word is simply memorizing the spelling and the meaning. They have realized it is important to learn words through use, but most of...