Research On High School Students' English Vocabulary Strategies

Vocabulary teaching and learning has long been ignored in middle school English teaching in our country. Until recently, there has been little emphasis placed on the learning strategies and the approach to the acquisition of vocabulary. However, the research which has been done on vocabulary learning strategies has tended to deal with college students, with very few studies looking at high school students.It is known that substantial vocabulary knowledge is always a prerequisite to the performance of language skills. Very often high school students make a great effort to study English words, but with little effect. Most students either agree or strongly agree that the important part of learning English is learning vocabulary. High school students expect to know and employ more effective learning strategies. Can learning strategies be taught to students? How to improve students' vocabulary-learning strategies? With these questions in mind, I made a study on English vocabulary-learning strategies for middle school students.I pursue this study, which aims to explore: (a) learner's beliefs and strategies of vocabulary learning adopted by senior high school students (b) How to improve strategies of vocabulary learning (c) the implication for English teaching and learning.The Vocabulary Learning Beliefs Scale used in this study was developed by Gu Yongqi and and Johnson's study (1996). This thesis discusses the problem concerning English vocabulary-learning strategies used by high school students. By undertaking the questionnaire among 180 high school students and conducting data collection and analysis, at the same time, I also attempted to deal with the approaches to the training of vocabulary-learning strategies and the acquisition of vocabulary.The implication for future English teaching and learning is that the vocabulary learning-strategies will help students not only to learn specific words but also to acquire vocabulary in different ways. It is absolutely vital that students will be better able to help themselves with appropriate strategy instruction, which will enable them to be good English learners in the end.