Use and Helpfulness Rankings of Vocabulary Learning Strategies Employed by EFL Learners in Taiwan

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify the vocabulary-learning strategies adopted by 303 Taiwanese EFL students by demonstrating the strategies they used, their perceptions of the helpfulness of these strategies, the helpfulness ratings of the strategies, and whether the patterns of strategy use change for students of different age groups. The subjects of the study consisted of 101 eighth-graders from a public junior high school, 90 eleventh-graders from a public senior high school, and 112 sophomore students from the Applied Foreign Languages Department at the private university in the Kaoshiung area. The survey was based mostly on Schmitt's (1997) study and on the translated version adopted in H. Chen's (1998) study. The results of the study show that the use of electronic dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries, and guessing from context are the most popular strategies shared by students from different age groups. Detailed descriptions of the usefulness rankings are given in the study. Teaching implications are made on the basis of the results of the study..