Research On Vocabulary Learning Strategies By Students With Learning Difficulties In Senior High Schools

In the process of learning English in senior high schools, some students become students with learning difficulties for a variety of reasons. These students with English learning difficulties often encounter a difficult problem: they have spent a lot of time on English vocabulary learning, but the effect is not good; they have learned for a long time but there are still many words they do not know. A lot of high school English teachers have also found that vocabulary learning is one of the big obstacles that many students with English learning difficulties often encounter in the process of English learning. Whether these students with English learning difficulties are trapped in a vocabulary learning strategy problem is worth studying. In order to know the vocabulary learning strategies used by the students with English learning difficulties , this research undertakes a study on the vocabulary learning strategies used by the students with English learning difficulties in senior high schools, trying to answer the following three questions:1. What are the general characteristics of the vocabulary learning strategies used by the students with English learning difficulties in senior high schools?2. Is there any difference among the vocabulary learning strategies used by the students with English learning difficulties in Senior One, Senior Two and Senior Three? If any, what are the differences?3. Is there any difference between the vocabulary learning strategies used by the students with English learning difficulties and by the students without English learning difficulties? If any, what are the differences?In this research, senior high school students with English learning difficulties refers to the senior high school students who are of normal intelligence, no physical defects, but whose English learning efficiency is low, whose English grades are lower than the minimum target requirements of"Senior High School English Curriculum Standards (Experimental)"(2003). Senior high school students with English learning difficulties in this research must meet the following three conditions: First, in the two recent large-scale tests, their English scores are in the final 20% of the location of the whole grade. Second, in the two recent large-scale tests, they failed in the English tests. Third, their English teachers think their English is really poor.With reference to previous research on vocabulary learning strategies classification, vocabulary learning strategies in this research are divided into meta-cognitive strategies, cognitive strategies, social strategies and resource strategies. The questionnaire of this research is mainly based on the scale of Gu & Johnson (1996). I delete, replace, add and supplement some questions according to the actual conditions of the senior high school students with English learning difficulties and my English learning experience. This 40-question questionnaire is composed of four vocabulary learning strategies as Level 1 indexes and some Level 2 indexes.In this research, I investigate the vocabulary learning strategies used by 148 students with English learning difficulties from three grades in a certain senior high school in Wenzhou through questionnaires and random interviews. I also comparatively investigate the vocabulary learning strategies used by 49 students with English learning difficulties and by 49 students without English learning difficulties in Senior Two through questionnaires and random interviews. Here are the findings:1. The overall number of the high school students with English learning difficulties who use English vocabulary learning strategies is relatively small, and the overall level of their English vocabulary learning strategies is relatively low. In the four investigated vocabulary learning strategies(meta-cognitive strategies, cognitive strategies, social strategies and resource strategies),the lowes(tsocial strategies) percentage is only 14.59% while he highest (cognitive strategies)percentage is 41.82%,2. The differences among the vocabulary learning strategies used by the students with English learning difficulties in Senior One, Senior Two and Senior Three are not significantly different. The difference is generally less than 3%.3. The vocabulary learning strategies used by the students with English learning difficulties and by the students without English learning difficulties differ significantly. The students without English learning difficulties use more vocabulary learning strategies than those with English learning difficulties. In the four investigated vocabulary learning strategies, the largest difference between the students with English learning difficulties and the students without English learning difficulties in Senior Two (in cognitive strategies) is 10.71%; the lowest difference (in social strategies) is 7.14%. The overall level of the English vocabulary learning strategies used by the students with English learning difficulties is also higher. The number of the Senior Two students without English learning difficulties who use self-regulation strategies, attention- selecting strategies, note-taking strategies, exercise-doing strategy, reading strategies is larger than that of the Senior Two students with English learning difficulties by 20%-30%.