An Investigation Into English Vocabulary Learning Strategies In Senior High Schools

It is well known that vocabulary plays a critical part in language teaching and learning. But for most ofsenior high school students, it is difficult for them to learn the English vocabulary well. So in order to helpthe students to learn English vocabulary more effectively, it is necessary to explore what vocabularylearning strategies students adopt in their learning process.The objective of this study was to find out the answer to the two questions:1. What strategies arefrequently used by the students in senior high school.2. What factors influence the students' selection ofthe English vocabulary learning strategies? For the second questions, the author will analyze it from therelationship between the learning styles and vocabulary learning strategies they prefer to choose in theirvocabulary learning.This study is carried out in the following steps: first of all, the author will introduce the definitions andclassifications of language learning strategies, vocabulary learning strategies and learning styles. Then theauthor use Reid's Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire (PLSPQ) and Gu and Johnson's(1996) questionnaires as tools to collect quantitative data.106students of Grade Two from No.2seniorhigh school in Xinxiang, Henan province are selected to do the study. The data were put into the computer,and the data is analyzed by SPSS17.0(the Statistical Package for Social Science).The questionnaire results indicate that:(1) In terms of vocabulary learning strategies, most students adopt the five frequently used strategies:prepetition strategies, pronunciation strategies, dictionary strategies, memory strategies and usingstrategies.(2)The distribution of learning styles in terms of senior high school students is various. Most studentsare individual style, and some other students belong to tactile styles, auditory styles, kinesthetic and groupstyles, only a few students are the visual styles.(3)There is a correlation between students' learning strategies and learning styles. Such as visual,auditory, kinesthetic and group learning styles prefer to use affective strategies when they learn Englishvocabulary; students of tactile styles are more prone to use social strategies; and students of individual styles are fond of using learning strategies of memory and meta-cognitive.The whole thesis is composed of the following five chapters.Chapter1gives a brief introduction to the motivations and objectives of the thesis and it also pointsout that the necessity of using learning strategies in the process of the vocabulary learning, so it briefs anoverall structure of the thesis. It aims to look into vocabulary learning strategies used by Xinxiang No.2senior high school students.Chapter2reviews the theories of the learning strategies and the classifications of vocabulary learningstrategies both in domestic and abroad. It provides theoretical support for the thesis.In Chapter3the design of the study is explained: the research questions, research subjects, researchdesign and procedures. The thesis also introduces two kinds of methods: questionnaire and interview.In Chapter4the author collects the data and analyzes the results of the questionnaires and interviews.Chapter5is the summary of the whole thesis. Based on the results of chapter4, it gives the majorfindings and suggestions to both the learners and the English teachers. The limitations of the study and theexpectation for the future thesis are also pointed out at last.