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CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
This study intends to investigate Taiwanese vocational high school students’
vocabulary learning strategies and their relationship with reading proficiency. The goal is to illuminate vocational high school students’ vocabulary learning strategies in use and the impact on the reading proficiency. Students with high and low reading proficiency levels are also compared to find out if there is any difference in their choice of vocabulary learning strategies. This chapter consists of four parts. First, the background and motivation of this study are presented. Next, some research questions are proposed. Then, the significance of this study is discussed. Finally, the organization of the thesis is summarized.
Background and Motivation
The utmost goal for high-school education is to equip students with the necessary knowledge and skills for academic achievement. English is without any doubt the most important language tool to achieve the goal. As an international language, it provides students with the access to keep up with the latest information and the most advanced knowledge in the modern world.
A learner’s language proficiency is closely related to his or her vocabulary knowledge (Kelly, 1991; Simic, 1990). Horwitz (1988) finds that a substantial number of ESL students either agreed or strongly agreed that the most important part of learning a foreign language is learning vocabulary. The relationship between vocabulary and reading is also investigated. Gauthier and Hall (1991) claim that vocabulary plays an important role in reading success or failure and that a strong link does exist between word knowledge and increased reading proficiency. Laufer (1997) also indicates that reading comprehension is
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strongly related to vocabulary knowledge, more strongly than to the other components of reading.
As an English teacher at a vocational high school, the researcher often hears many students talking about their difficulties in learning English. When they encounter a large number of unknown words in a reading passage, they just don’t want to read it anymore.
There may be some clues in the reading passage. However, if the clues themselves contain too many new words, they are not helpful for students to guess the meaning and understand the whole passage. It is assumed that the lack of vocabulary knowledge is the major obstacle for EFL learners to read (Alderson, 1984; Ulijn, 1981).
In addition to the researcher’s personal observation, some facts about current educational environment in Taiwan should be mentioned. According to the Nine-year Integrated Curriculum, a junior high school graduate should at least learn 1,200 words, and according to Cheng (2002), a senior high school graduate is supposed to possess 4,000 to 7,000 words. Apparently, there exists a huge gap between the vocabulary requirements of junior high and senior high school students. A senior high school student has a large amount of vocabulary to catch up in just three years. However, with so limited time spent on learning English in the vocational high school, about 3 to 4 periods per week, students inevitably have to depend more on their own independent learning to build up vocabulary.
The importance of independent learning of vocabulary has also been revealed in Sökmen’s (1997) study. She claims that the final goal in current language learning is to help students learn how to continue to acquire vocabulary on their own. From this perspective, there is an urgent need for language teachers to have a better understanding of students’ vocabulary learning strategies and how these strategies relate to students’
learning outcomes so that strategies that are beneficial to students’ language learning can be incorporated into instruction.
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Motivated by the studies and situations mentioned above, this study intends to explore vocational high school students’ use of vocabulary learning strategies. More specifically, it is attempted to investigate the frequencies of use of different vocabulary learning strategies and to identify the most and least frequently used vocabulary learning strategies. The second purpose is to determine whether the use of vocabulary learning strategies is related to learners’ reading proficiency.
Research Questions
The research questions of this study are as follows:
1. What vocabulary learning strategies are used by Taiwanese vocational high school students?
2. Is there any relationship between Taiwanese vocational high school students’ reported use of vocabulary learning strategies and their English reading proficiency?
3. Is there any difference between high and low English reading proficiency students in their use of vocabulary learning strategies?
Significance of the Study
With so limited time spent in class and so many words to be learned in current English educational environment, more emphasis should be put on learners’ own endeavors in the process of language learning. The focus on learners’ vocabulary learning strategies in use is significant. First, the investigation of vocabulary learning strategies gives language teachers better ideas about the general profile of vocabulary learning strategies reported to be used by vocational high school students. Besides, as mentioned earlier, learners’ language proficiency and reading comprehension have been proved to be closely related to their vocabulary knowledge (Kelly, 1991; Laufer, 1997; Simic, 1990).
However, the impact of vocabulary learning behavior on reading proficiency is rarely
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probed. By investigating the relationship between vocabulary learning strategies and reading proficiency, the research hope to further illuminate the influences of language learning behavior on the learning outcome. Furthermore, the difference between high and low reading proficiency students’ choices of vocabulary learning strategies may give both language teachers and learners some insight toward the utility of different vocabulary learning strategies. It is expected that language learners’ strategy awareness can be further aroused. After all, to introspect on one’s own learning behavior is important in the process of learning.
Organizations of the Thesis
This thesis is organized as follows. In Chapter One, the background and motivation of the study, the research questions, and the significance of the study are stated. In Chapter Two, previous studies on word knowledge, language learning strategies, vocabulary learning strategies are reviewed. In Chapter Three, the methodology adopted in this study is described, including subjects, instruments, experimental procedures, and data analysis.
In Chapter Four, the results of the study are presented. In Chapter Five, the results of the study are first discussed. Pedagogical implication, limitation of the study, suggestions for further research and conclusions are also represented.
