An Empirical Study Of Senior One High School Students' Cognitive Strategies In Learning English Vocabulary

Since the promulgation of The National English Curriculum Standard for General High Schools in 2002, higher requirements have been set for high school students in China and consequently vocabulary teaching has become a major problem for the English teachers, who are beginning to realize that teaching the students word by word is not nearly as good as teaching them how to apply effective vocabulary learning strategies. Therefore, it is a highly significant task to explore issues relating to English vocabulary learning strategies. The present research aims to find out (1) the general vocabulary learning beliefs of Senior One high school students in Guangzhou; (2) the general vocabulary cognitive strategies adopted by Senior One high school students in Guangzhou; (3) the differences between successful English learners and unsuccessful English learners in adopting cognitive strategies in their English vocabulary learning; (3) the possibility of unsuccessful learner improving her ability to learn English vocabulary if she is aligned with the strategy awareness training.A cohort of 68 Senior One high school students participate in the research. Among the 68 participants, the top ten who have the largest English vocabulary size are chosen as successful language learners and the bottom ten who have the smallest English vocabulary size are chosen as unsuccessful language learners. Besides, one of the bottom ten is randomly chosen as the sole subject for a case study. Questionnaires, VLT (vocabulary level test), diaries and word dictations are used to elicit the data and results.The results of the investigation show that the notion that vocabulary should be learnt in context and through using is shared by the majority, that the most frequently used vocabulary cognitive strategies are inferencing, note-taking, contextualization and resourcing, that there is no significant difference between the successful English learners and the unsuccessful English learners in using identical vocabulary cognitive strategies, that the sole subject in the case study has improved her ability to learn English vocabulary after a 40-day (Nov.1st-Dec.10th) period of strategy (?) eness training.