| Vocabulary learning is the basis of English learning. No matter how good one’s grammar is and how beautiful one’s pronunciation is, if one has no adequate vocabulary and cannot use words expertly, one cannot still communicate with others in English. And utilizing vocabulary learning strategies can be powerful means of improving the efficiency of English vocabulary learning. The students with English learning difficulties is a special group who suffer from low English learning efficiency and their scores are usually lower compared to the average students. And students often begin their systematic English leaning from the junior middle school, so helping the junior middle school students who have English learning difficulties utilize vocabulary learning strategies will benefit them with the improvement of their performance to a great extent and the arousal of their English learning interest.This paper first classifies the vocabulary learning strategies into the metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies, social strategies and resource strategies. Based on these strategies, the students who have English learning difficulties from two middle schools in Chongqing were investigated through questionnaires and interviews, which aim to get a comprehensive view about how the students with English learning difficulties utilize vocabulary learning strategies. The results show that the level of vocabulary learning strategies use is low. They use metacognitive strategies and cognitive strategies occasionally and they seldom use social strategies and resource strategies. In aspect of metacognitive strategies, the students with English learning difficulties seldom use planning strategies, self-monitoring strategies, self-evaluation strategies while the frequency of self-reinforcement strategies use is relatively high. In aspect of cognitive strategies, they use rote memory strategies more and they seldom use contextualization strategies, grouping strategies and inferencing strategies. In aspect of social strategies, they seldom use cooperation strategies. In aspect of resource strategies, they seldom seek extra resources for vocabulary learning. The reason for that is twofold:the students are lack of enthusiasm for English vocabulary learning and they fail to master the effective methods for English learning, what’s more, they can’t communicate with the teacher and companion proactively and effectively. The teachers should also be to blame for that. They lack multiple teaching methods and fail to give more care and attention to the students with English learning difficulties. And they didn’t help them set up an open and corporative class environment.To solve the problems above, this study provides countermeasures for both students and teachers to help with the improvement of vocabulary learning strategies use. In aspect of metacognitive strategies the students with English learning difficulties should build up their confidence for English learning first, learn to make study plan and self-reflection before, during and after learning. The teacher should help the students with English learning difficulties make study plan, supervise them following the plan ind examine the learning outcomes timely. In aspect of cognitive strategies, when memorizing the words, they may use loose leaf note books to classify the word and they should use their eyes, ears, mouth and hands together, try to guess the meaning by contextualization,use the dictionary correctly and do more exercises. For teachers, they should use varied methods of teaching, be aware of the priority in vocabulary teaching, what’s more, teachers should guild the students to use dictionary corretcly. In aspect of social strategies, students should communicate with teachers proactively and cooperate with companions. Teachers should pay more attention to formation of cliques and encourage cooperation. In aspect of resource strategies, students should try to search nore learning resources within their abilities and teachers should provide convenience... |
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