A Study Of Senior High School Students' Preference For English Vocabulary Learning Strategies

Vocabulary learning plays a crucial part in English study. It's commonly acknowledged that vocabulary learning poses a bottleneck to senior high school students' English performances, so the introduction and application of vocabulary learning strategies comes their way. The dissertation examines senior high school students' preference for vocabulary learning strategies, in which case, some vocabulary learning strategies will be more frequently used or considered to be of more help, with an aim to cast some light on effective vocabulary learning and sufficient strategy use.With the 106 senior two students of Xinyang No. 2 Experimental Senior High School as the subject, this dissertation is intended for a quantitative research into senior high school students' preference for vocabulary learning strategies. Like the majority of social science studies, this dissertation deals with how to identify the terms relevant to preference for vocabulary learning strategies, to prepare the vocabulary test paper and to compile a self-reported questionnaire.Based upon different categorizations and taxonomies of learning strategies or vocabulary learning strategies from the researchers abroad and at home, the dissertation lists 20 items of specific vocabulary learning strategies coming under four-dimension strategies, elicits the methodology employed in collecting, processing and analyzing data, and then comes to the findings as follows:1) High school students prefer to use a limited number of vocabulary learning strategies. Out of the 20 special categories of vocabulary learning strategies, only 7 specific categories of vocabulary strategies such as selective attention, repetition and self-encouragement are frequently favored by them. Senior High school students less believe in rote learning than supposed.2) Senior high school students' preference for vocabulary learning strategies is obviously individualized with a view of each individual. However, different sexes share an insignificant difference in overall preference for vocabulary strategies.3) Different performance learners (high-score group vs. low-score group) have different preferences.4) There exists a certain correlation between vocabulary learning strategies and their vocabulary size. To be exact, 8 specific categories of vocabulary strategies such as planning, guessing through context are positively correlated with senior high school students' preference for vocabulary learning strategies.