A Study On The Effect Of Vocabulary Learning Strategy On Junior High School Students’ Breadth And Depth Of Vocabulary

Vocabulary is closely related to the improvement of listening,speaking,reading,and writing competences.Vocabulary learning includes not only superficial memorization of meaning and form but also multidimensional and deep learning from semantics and pragmatics.Scholars generally believe vocabulary knowledge includes two dimensions: breadth of vocabulary and depth of vocabulary.Vocabulary learning strategy(VLS)is an effective way to improve students’ vocabulary.English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education(2022 Edition)has improved the quantity and quality requirement for vocabulary.Studies on VLS that can effectively facilitate students’ breadth or depth of vocabulary mostly aim at college students or senior high school students.However,there is a little less research on junior high school students.This study focuses on 90 junior high school students.Based on theories of constructivism,memory,and levels of processing,three instruments of questionnaire,tests and interview are used to investigate students’ use of VLSs and the effects of VLSs on students’ breadth and depth of vocabulary.The three research questions are as follows:(1)What VLSs are used by students to learn English vocabulary?(2)How do the VLSs influence students’ breadth of vocabulary?(3)How do the VLSs influence students’ depth of vocabulary? The collected data were analyzed by SPSS.28.The results are:(1)Experimental group students are better at using VLS to master more meanings and use multidimensional knowledge of vocabulary correctly in contexts.(2)Those strategies that have highly positive influences on students’ breadth of vocabulary may not influence students’ depth of vocabulary positively,such as taking notes,repetition,and resourcing,and while those strategies that have highly positive influences on students’ depth of vocabulary may not influence students’ breadth of vocabulary positively,such as guessing,activation,and encoding.Metacognitive strategy emphasizes planning,monitoring,and evaluating vocabulary learning processes and ways,and social/affective strategy focuses more on students’ interest and needs,so they’re beneficial to students’ mastery of quantities of vocabulary and learning vocabulary deeply.(3)Students’ use of VLSs exerts positive influences on both breadth and depth of vocabulary and there is also a significantly positive correlation between students’ mastery of breadth of vocabulary and depth of vocabulary.(4)Students can combine with several VLSs strategically and personally together,especially excellent students who tend to use metacognitive strategy and social/affective strategy to learn English words effectively.The implications are:(1)Teachers try to use various methods to guide students to better use VLS to learn vocabulary effectively.(2)Teachers teach students taking notes,repetition,and resourcing selectively for quantities of vocabulary while guessing,activation,and encoding are taught explicitly to learn English vocabulary deeply.(3)Teachers focus more on monitoring and feedback on students’ use of VLSs to improve English grades.(4)Teachers emphasize the cultivation of students’ metacognitive ability to improve their autonomous learning ability and to learn vocabulary more creatively and effectively.Due to the limitations of the thesis,such as time duration,relatively small sample size,and the researcher’s analytical ability,this study may not comprehensively summarize and reflect junior high school students’ use of VLS.Therefore,future research should be conducted with sufficient time and select a large number of samples for in-depth and comprehensive investigations.