Vocabulary Learning Strategies Employed by Undergraduate EFL Jordanian Students

Abstract

The present study investigates the various vocabulary learning strategies (VLSs) used by undergraduate Jordanian students majoring English Language and Literature in Jordanian universities. The five categories of the vocabulary learning strategies (Memory, Determination, Social, Cognitive, and Metacognitive) were used in this study following Schmitt's taxonomy. For this purpose, a questionnaire containing forty items selected from Schmitt's (1997) Vocabulary Learning Strategies Questionnaire (VLSQ) was administered to a pool of 110 Jordanian students majoring in English Language and Literature from eight Jordanian universities. This testing instrument was used to reveal the types of vocabulary learning strategies used by the participants, to discover the most and least frequently used VLS employed by them, and to know the main patterns of variation of the participants' choice of VLSs if they are high, medium, or low VLS users. The descriptive analysis of the study showed that Jordanian EFL learners were "medium" strategy users overall. With regard to strategy categories, the results revealed that Memory strategies were the most frequently employed by them and Metacognitive strategies were the least frequently used strategies among them. Although the participants were medium strategy users, the results of the VLSQ revealed that some individual strategies were employed at a low level. This result leads to adopt the learners' individual vocabulary learning strategy as an important variable in future research. The findings of this study will be advantageous to language instructors to improve effective vocabulary teaching techniques and curriculum designers to provide learners with preferable vocabulary learning strategies.

The Use and Evaluation of Vocabulary Learning Strategies among Sudanese EFL Learners

“…Table 3 shows that three discovery strategies registered high frequency use by respondents and they range from 80.0% to 85.0%. These are the strategies of (a) using contextual guessing (80.0%), (b) asking classmates about the meaning of new words (85.0%), and (c) using English-Arabic dictionaries (88.3%).This finding is in line with Schmitt's (1997), Al-Fuhaid's (2004) and Rabadi's (2016) studies, which reported that using bilingual dictionary strategy was the most frequently used by respondents. In addition, this finding is consistent with Schmitt's (1997), Fan's (2003), Al-Fuhaid's (2004), Kulikova's (2015) and Hashemi and Hadavi's (2015) studies, in which, guessing strategy was the most frequently used by their respondents.…”

Vocabulary Learning Strategies (VLSs) Preferred by Saudi EFL Students

“…Finally, metacognitive strategy is a conscious process whereby the learner is able to make a decision to plan, monitor and evaluate the learning process using methodologies that support the learner to understand the way he or she best learns. In this strategy, the learners employ self-awareness and are able to "learn to think," as well as "think to learn" to control and evaluate their learning (Lai, 2016;Rabadi, 2016;Baskin et al, 2017).…”

“…In her study, Rabadi (2016) investigated the various vocabulary learning strategies used by undergraduate Jordanian students majoring in English language and literature in Jordanian Universities. Again, the prevalent instrument of study was Schmitt's taxonomy (1997), which covered the five categories of strategies used (memory, determination, social, cognitive, and metacognitive).…”

Influence of Using Games on Learning English Vocabulary by Syrian Refugee Students in Jordan

“…Studies on the importance of learning vocabulary have been conducted over the last few decades (Halliwell, 1992;Cameron, 2001;Lessard-Clouston, 2013;Rabadi, 2016). Regarding using games to learn vocabulary, Azriel et al (2005) stated that "regardless of age or economic, ethnic, or social background, people understand the language of play".…”