A Research On English Vocabulary Learning Strategies Of Senior High School Students

Vocabulary is the foundation of language learning. The size and use ability of students’vocabulary have a direct influence on the development of their listening, speaking, reading and writing. Many students spend much time learning English vocabulary but get little effect. Senior High School English Curriculum Standards (2003) puts forward to higher requirements:vocabulary size is required to enlarge; students are asked to make more use of learned vocabulary. Since the "New Curriculum Standards" was implemented, the reform of English vocabulary teaching also has changed and it has been a hot spot to analyze and discuss whether English vocabulary teaching of senior high school is in accordance with the "New Curriculum Standards". At present, many scholars have deeply researched English vocabulary learning, but their subjects are main university students, few senior high school students. Therefore, it is very necessary to study English vocabulary teaching of senior high school teaching.O’Malley and Chamot (1990) for language learning offer meatacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies and social/affective strategies:metacognitive strategies are used to evaluate, administer and monitor the use of cognitive strategies; cognitive strategies are more used in the process of language learning activities; social/affective strategies provides more opportunities to contact language. This strategy classification has a direct influence on senior high school teaching and the questionnaires of this study are made on the basis of the three strategies. The author regards the students from Shangrao No.1Middle School of Jiangxi as the subjects and pays attention to researching following several aspects of English vocabulary learning strategies:first,-English vocabulary learning strategies beliefs of senior high school students; second, the specific current situation of English vocabulary learning strategies used by senior high school students; third, the difference and similarity of English vocabulary learning strategies used by different proficient students; fourth, which vocabulary strategies have positive effects on students’vocabulary learning; fifth, how to use effective English vocabulary learning strategies to learn vocabulary. The research results show:(1) students generally accept the two beliefs of "words should be learned by applying" and "words should be learned in context, and they basically disagree " words should be learned by mechanic memory";(2) the use frequency of metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies and social/affective strategies is low used by most senior high school students;(3) there are differences on both vocabulary learning beliefs and vocabulary learning strategies between high-proficiency students and low-proficiency students.The author hopes that there are some positive significances of this thesis for senior high school English teaching.