A Study On Vocabulary Learning Strategies In Junior Schools From The Perspective Of New Curriculum Standards

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 second language learning, which plays the most important role."Therefore, it is of great significance to teach students strategies and help them use these strategies in vocabulary learning.The study in learning strategies began in the 1970s. Many researchers found that learning strategies have positive effects on language learning (Rubbin,1995; Oxford, 1990). In China, some researchers and teachers have also investigated learning strategies (Wen Qiufang, 1995; Ma Guanghui, 1997; Wu Xia & Wang Qiang, 1998). But most of their studies are concerned with college students and graduate students, and the researches for middle school students are far from sufficient.The thesis aims to study the overall pattern and concrete English vocabulary learning strategies for middle school students. A questionnaire is adapted from Gu and Johnson's version and handed out to 185 Chinese junior middle school students in four schools in Linyi. It makes a thorough investigation of students'vocabulary learning strategies in both meta-cognitive and cognitive levels. The data are collected and analyzed, based on which, the following conclusions are reached: 1) Most investigated learners consider vocabulary learning as a monotonous, mechanical task and they seldom get pleasure and sense of success. The vocabulary learning strategies they generally adopt are cognitive, meta-cognitive and social (or emotional) ones. Among the four categories (including social, cognitive, memorial and meta-cognitive strategies) investigated, cognitive strategies are the most frequently used, followed by memory strategies, meta-cognitive strategies, and social strategies. Six individual vocabulary learning strategies are reported as the most frequently used ones, and eleven are reported as the least frequently used ones. Junior Three students favor those cognitively less demanding strategies, and they often employ certain strategies for convenience; 2) Vocabulary learning strategies used by junior students are very limited. And among them, repetition and dictionary using predominate all learning strategies. However, some deep vocabulary learning strategies, such as guessing strategies, word formation analysis, context strategies and imagery strategies and so on are seldom used. In a word, their vocabulary learning strategies should be rated as a medium or low level.By proposing and resolving some questions, the study is expected to shed some light on the instruction and further studies in this field.