A Study Of Relationship Between Senior High School Students' Vocabulary Learning Strategy Use, Vocabulary Size And English Proficiency

Vocabulary is the foundation of all language skills. Since vocabulary strategy is one of the key factors that affect efficiency of vocabulary learning, it is necessary to investigate students'use of vocabulary learning strategies in order to help them form suitable vocabulary strategies. This study is intended to find out the general vocabulary strategies employed by senior high school students, and explore the relationship between their vocabulary strategy use, vocabulary size and English proficiency.The researcher investigated 182 senior high school students of a senior high school in Taian, Shangdong Province. The subjects came from four classes of Grade 3. The study employed a mixed-method design by using both questionnaire and interview.182 students participated in the questionnaire survey and eight students were interviewed. The instruments included vocabulary learning strategies questionnaire which was designed according to O'Malley and Chamot's learning strategy questionnaire, some of Schmmit's vocabulary strategies and resource strategy, and a vocabulary size test which was adapted from Ma Guanghui's vocabulary size test. Students'English proficiency was measured according to their final examination results. Another instrument was interview which was conducted after the data analysis of the questionnaire.8 subjects were selected for the interview taking into account their vocabulary size, final exam results and gender.SPSS 17.0 was used to analyze the data from questionnaire and vocabulary size test. The major findings are:(1) Senior high school students use VLS at medium frequency in general and don't well grasp the words required in the HSCS. (2) There exist significant correlations between their VLS, vocabulary size, and English proficiency level. All the four categories of VLS correlate highly with vocabulary size positively. Meta-cognitive strategies and cognitive strategies have significant correlations with their English proficiency positively. (3) There are significant differences in the use of four categories of VLS between groups with large and small vocabulary size. The two groups with high and low proficiency are significantly different in the use of meta-cognitive strategies and are almost significantly different in the use of cognitive strategies. (4) There only exist important differences between males and females in the use of meta-cognitive strategies. Among the 16 sub-strategies, on selective strategy and active learning strategy, males and females are quite different from each other. The findings from interview are in accordance with what has been found from questionnaire.Based on the findings of the study, implications for senior high school English teaching and learning are proposed. English teachers should pay attention to the differences in the use of vocabulary strategies between different groups of students, demonstrate the use of vocabulary strategies in the teaching process, and encourage students to use these strategies so as to enhance the efficiency of vocabulary learning.