Vocabulary Learning Strategies Employed by Thai University Students across Four Academic Profiles

Abstract

The present study explored the use of vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) by undergraduate Thai EFL students doing an academic reading course at a comprehensive university in northeastern Thailand and examined if there was a significant difference between the students' use of VLS and their academic majors. A five-point Likert-scale questionnaire with 41 items adapted from Jones’s (2006) taxonomy of VLS which was categorized into 8 different strategies was administered to a group of 267 Thai undergraduate students purposively selected from across four academic majors–Business major (BM), Engineering major (EM), Agriculture major (AM), and Health science major (HM). The results revealed that the students were moderate users of VLS, with dictionary and note-taking strategies being reported as the most frequently used VLS and selective attention the least frequently used VLS. The results of One-way ANOVA showed that the students were significantly different (p<.05) in using five out of eight strategies. Post hoc comparisons using Scheffe test showed that health science students used VLS more frequently than the rest of academic majors.