A Survey Of The Application Of English Vocabulary Learning Strategies Of Senior High School Students

Language formed by three factors as pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar is the important communication tool for human. Vocabulary is the basis and kernel in these factors. In other words, no expression and mind communication could be performed without vocabulary. Harmer(1990) indicated that “if the language structure is bone in the language, vocabulary will provide important organ and blood for the language.” Vocabulary is a building material for the language. Without vocabulary the language will become meaningless. Meanwhile, learning and mastering of language would be impossible. Therefore, vocabulary is one of standards for measuring individual language level.Since 1970 s, foreign scholars started to focus on vocabulary learning strategy. They achieved great success from theory study on vocabulary learning strategy to empirical study. After 1990 s, some scholars in our country started to discuss and study in the field of vocabulary learning strategy and achieved glad success. Foreign and domestic studies on vocabulary learning strategy all discovered that effective vocabulary learning strategies can rapidly promote learner’s vocabulary learning and assist learners to improve ability of listening, speaking, reading, writing and translation. Thus, it’s important for high school students to improve vocabulary learning efficiency and English learning scores by mastering correct and effective vocabulary learning strategies, especially for high school students, there are more subjects, heavy mission required to be learned, correct and effective using vocabulary learning strategies can rapidly improve their vocabulary learning efficiency. However, observing foreign and domestic studies on vocabulary learning strategy we can find that most of studies on vocabulary learning strategy focus on learners as adults, university students and postgraduates, there is lack of study on vocabulary learning strategy from common high school students. Thus, it is necessary for exploration on using situation of vocabulary learning strategy to set high school students as research subjects.The purpose of this study is to explore the high school students’ beliefs of English vocabulary learning, overall using situation of English vocabulary learning strategies from high school students, differences on using vocabulary learning strategies from well-learned and poorly-learned students, and vocabulary learning strategies selection from students with different vocabulary quantity.The research subjects of this study are students in grade two from a high school of Tongren City. Through the research and study for 120 solve following questions:1.What are the high school students’ beliefs of vocabulary learning and the overall situation of English vocabulary learning strategies employed by senior high school students?2. Are there any differences from using and selecting vocabulary learning strategies between well-learned students and poorly-learned students? What are they if any?3. Are there any differences on vocabulary learning strategies selection from students with different vocabulary quantity?This thesis adopted four research methods as literature research, questionnaire survey, vocabulary test and interview. Based on classification of vocabulary learning strategy from O’Malley&Chamot(1990), vocabularyquality level test presented by Nation(1990) and existing high school English books, author designed questionnaires,vocabulary test and interview outline, through these methods, studied on 120 students with grade 2 in No.1 High school of Tongren City.Through the research, author obtained the following results:1. The vocabulary learning belief “ vocabulary should be learnt through rote learning” is more emphasized by the investigation of high school students. Meanwhile, they attach great importance to application. Total average value of high school students using frequency of vocabulary learning strategy is 2.92, which indicates that students from high school don’t frequently use vocabulary learning strategy, and they can’t flexibly apply vocabulary learning strategies in assisting their vocabulary learning.2. Application of learning strategies from well-learned students is more frequent than that from poorly-learned students, especially differences from metacognitive strategies are obvious.3. Comparing to students with low vocabulary quantity, students with more vocabulary quantity are good at application of vocabulary learning strategy.For above studied results, this thesis presented implications for English vocabulary teaching and vocabulary learning, and suggestions on future study.