AN INVESTIGATION OF THE EFFECTS OF VOCABULARY LEARNING STRATEGIES ON DEVELOPING LEARNERS’ LEXICAL COMPETENCE

Abstract

Vocabulary learning is an important and indispensable part of any language learning process. In fact the greatest tools we can give students not only in their education but more generally in life is a large and rich vocabulary. However, most students have difficulties in both understanding the relation between the different parts of a text and in speaking and communicating in English. This research focuses on the vocabulary learning strategies that EFL students use while learning vocabulary in order to enrich their vocabulary knowledge. The objective of this work is to explore the different vocabulary learning strategies EFL students use when studying English as a foreign language in order to increase their lexical competence. The main hypothesis of the following study is: If students develop the strategies used in acquiring vocabulary items, then they will develop their lexical competence. This work investigated the following key questions: What are the strategies most frequently used by EFL students in understanding and discovering a new vocabulary item? Are Algerian EFL students high, medium or low users of vocabulary learning strategies? The method used in this study is quantitative by means of two questionnaires, one for teachers and one for students in the Department of Foreign Languages at Mohamed kheider University of Biskra. A random sample of eighty students and fifteen teachers answered the questionnaires. The results obtained revealed that EFL students use vocabulary learning strategies to a medium extent. On the basis of the obtained results, some recommendations have been proposed to help students to use different techniques in learning vocabulary items which contribute to their productivity in writing and speaking and understanding reading and listening. Those recommendations were suggested to the teachers emphasizing their role in teaching vocabulary and how to provide their students with different strategies that help them learn more vocabulary items such as teaching vocabulary through context and using technologies in teaching vocabulary items.