High School English Vocabulary Learning Strategy Research

Vocabulary is widely acknowledged as a key component of foreign language proficiency, making it a logical target of studies into how language is acquired. In vocabulary learning strategy, the early foreign studies, mainly about training and effects of individual retention strategies or a small number of them, are lack of objective observation on strategies employed by learners in practice as a whole. The recent studies in China have found that the learners use more than one kind of vocabulary learning strategy and established the framework of vocabulary learning strategies, while they only focused on one or some aspects of them. What' s more, most of the studies focus on the college students and neglect middle school students. This study, based on an overall theoretical frame of vocabulary strategies including vocabulary learning beliefs, metacognitive strategy, cognitive strategy, social/affective strategy and resource strategy, has investigated Chinese middle school students' vocabulary learning beliefs and strategy use .The study reported the vocabulary strategies used by Chinese senior school students by means of quantitative as well as qualitative methods. The aims of the research are four-fold: (1) the category and frequency of the vocabulary and strategies employed by Chinese senior school students; (2) the difference between male and female students in Vocabulary Test score, belief and strategy use; (3) the differences between high-score students and low-score students in vocabulary beliefs and strategy use; (4) the relationship between strategy use and vocabulary errors of writing .The participants in the quantitative part of this paper included 90 senior school students from No. 27 Middle School of Nanjing and Luhe Advanced Middle School of Nanjing. A vocabulary test and a vocabulary learning strategy questionnaire were usedfor data collection. In the qualitative part, 10 students were interviewed. The quantitative part were input into the computer and analyzed with the software SPSS and the interviews were recorded and transcribed for analysis.The major findings of this research are follows:1. The present study indicates that Chinese senior school students have changed the traditional belief that learning words is just memorizing. They have realized it is important to learn words through use, but most of them still use rehearsal strategies in practice. Most students think that they can learn more words through reading and spend special time reciting new words only before the teacher dictates new words. After all, Chinese senior school students are developing their own learning strategies.