A Study Of English Vocabulary Learning Strategies Of Xibe Secondary School Students

Vocabulary is one of the important areas that scholars and researchers have done considerable work, especially, of the vocabulary learning strategy. However, little research has been done to study the vocabulary learning strategy employed by secondary school students, especially, the minority students in rural areas. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to investigate the vocabulary learning strategies used by secondary school students in minority region, and to provide some suggestions for the current teaching reform and vocabulary teaching.The researcher conducts a survey study of total 74 junior two minority students in Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County in Xinjiang. In this study a questionnaire of vocabulary learning strategies are used to examine students'use of metacognitive, cognitive, and social/affective strategies, and an interview and two weeks classroom observations are also adopted as a qualitative approach to find out 1) the general use of the vocabulary learning strategy; 2) the differences between male students and females in the use of vocabulary learning strategy; 3) the differences between the more efficient users and the less efficient ones; 4) the correlation among the strategy use, English achievement and vocabulary size.The collected data was processed with SPSS 14.0 so as to show the results of the research with descriptive statistic analysis, independent samples t-test, and correlation. The main findings are summarized as follows:First, the secondary school minority students use variety of strategies ranging from metacognitive, cognitive strategies to social/affective strategies, but the overall level of vocabulary learning strategies is not very high. Second, the male students'belief is higher than females in rote learning. While mean scores of female students are higher than male students in application belief. Third, gender difference is shown significance in metacognitive strategies and cognitive strategies. Both male and female students show negative significance in plan making and repetition. Male students use more selective attention than female students and show positive significance. Fourth, the more efficient users did much better in the use of some metacognitive strategies and cognitive strategies than the less efficient ones. Fifth, both English achievement and vocabulary size are correlated with the use of vocabulary learning strategies. English achievement is significantly correlated with vocabulary size. But merely metacognitive strategy shows no correlation with English achievement, while only cognitive strategy is significantly correlated with vocabulary size.Based on the findings, this study also provides some implications for English teaching and learning in secondary school. First, teachers should leave more interactive time for the students to do verbal practice in class. Second, teachers should introduce some vocabulary learning strategies consciously so that to make them awareness of the importance of these strategies. Third, should use media to expand students'exposure to English language. Fourth, teachers should try to develop self-confidence of the low proficiency students. Meanwhile, teachers should try to cultivate the ability of self-management of the low proficiency students.