High School Students, And Low-grouped Students' Vocabulary Learning Strategy Differences

In the field of foreign laguage teaching research,the researching focus has gradually shifted from the teacher-centered practice to the student centered one.A series of research results.Regarding foreign language teaching have indicated that the differences between learning strategies have a decisive influence on students'achievements when other conditions are approximately the same. To be proficient in English, one must be good at learning vocabulary. However,recent linguists believe that the best way to teach vocabulary is to teach the learner the learning strategies.Vocabulary learning strategies are one of the most important components in learning strategies.Chamot conducted a research into learning strategies in different aspects and drew the conclusion that when students learn vocabulary,the number of strategies they adopt is the largest. H owever,as to the application of the learning strategies to Chinese students and the applicable environment, there is much left for further investigation.As it turns out, high score students are highly motivated, well self-montoring and adopt efficient strategies while low score students are low motivated, badly self-monitoring and adopt inefficient strategies. High-score students are better in using vocabulary in their daily life, they use various methods to enlarge their vocabulary. They have a strong sense in the errors of compositions while low scored students do on have such a strong sense.In the thesis and experiment design, the author is aimed at finding out the different learning strategies employed by the students grouped according to their performances in the vocabulary tests. The students are divided into the high-score group and the low-score group according to their scores after a reliable test. Then, the students are interviewed and given questionnaires. The theory adopted in this thesis is the information-processing model. The result indicates that most of the students within the high-score group arebetter users of consolidation and memory strategies. They adopt different methods in using and enlarging their vocabulary. As to reading, the difference between these two groups is not quite noticeable, which is not in accordance with the findings of some experiments published up to now. In conclusion, the different performances between students, to a great extent, are caused by learning strategies. So it is necessary for teachers to provide efficient learning strategies to students and enable them to learn how to use the strategies. If teachers pay more attention to the training in vocabulary learning strategies, it can definitely help students to improve their achievements. It is necessary to emphasize strategies in our teaching, especially those in connection with vocabulary learning.The thesis consists of five parts. The first part introduces the framework of the thesis and themain contents of the paper. The second part describes the historical aspect of learning strategies, its definition,taxonomy and characteristics in a comprehensive way. The third part deals mainly with the positive effects of language learning strategies on teaching. The fourth part focuses on the specific research of vocabulary learning strategies. In this part, the historical aspect of the vocabulary teaching is initially discussed. Then presented is a comprehensive description of taxonomy of vocabulary learning strategies. The literature review forms the end of the part. The fifth part states the different components of the experiment-the description of the experiment, experimental design, data analysis and the positive effect on practical teaching. Bibliography and appendixes wrap up the end of the thesis.