On English Vocabulary Learning Strategies For Middle School Students

Vocabulary is the basic unit in the language. In communication, it is essential for transferring information, and in language learning, it plays an important role in improving students' language ability. Nowadays, most language practitioners hold that vocabulary plays a core role in the language learning. Just like what Lewis stated, "Vocabulary acquisition is the center in the SL L, which plays the most important role." Therefore, it is of great significance to teach students strategies and make them apply these strategies in vocabulary learning.The study in learning strategies began in 1970's. Many researchers found that learning strategies have positive effect on language learning (Rubbin,1995; Oxford, 1990) . In China, some researchers and teachers also investigated learning strategies (Wen Qiu fang, 1995; Ma Guang hui, 1997; Wu Xia & Wang Qiang, 1998), but most of them were concerning college students, and the researches about middle school students were very few.This paper is an empirical study on the vocabulary learning strategies of three classes of middle school students. 120 students are the subjects of the investigation. Before the investigation, an English vocabulary test was conducted among the 120 subjects to test their vocabulary size and differentiate the high-scorers and low-scorers. Then A learning style questionnaire, a vocabulary learning strategy questionnaire and a vocabulary learning questionnaire were used as instrument to investigate the use of vocabulary strategies. After that, the statistic tool—SPSS version 11.5 (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) was used to analyze the data, and the results were discussed according to the statistics. The research proves that the most strategies used by middle school students are memory strategies, cognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies. The three strategies have an obvious effect on students' vocabulary learning. Therefore, it is suggested that vocabulary learning strategies should be arranged into the secondary school curriculum, and be taught in the secondary English classroom.