The Vocabulary Learning Strategies of English Department Students of Faculty of Letters Academic Year of 2013/2014

Monafisa Rizqi

 

Abstract

 

This research talks about Vocabulary Learning Strategies  (VLS)  of English Department  Students  of  Faculty of Letters Academic Year of 2013/2014.  Those students used English as a Foreign Language (FL).  This study concerns on Second Language Acquisition (SLA), especially the VLS. VLS are significant to improve the students’ skill in learning vocabulary and defining the meaning of new word. The purposes of this research are: first, showing and describing the strategies of L2 (English as a Second/Foreign Language)  vocabulary learning;  second, finding what  VLS which are mostly used by the English Department  students  of  Faculty of  Letters  academic  year  of  2013/2014  are.  The  participants  are  92  English Department  students of  Faculty of Letters  academic year  of 2013/2014 in questionnaire and 8 participants of them are interviewed in the interview section. The questionnaire uses 5-Likert  Scale by LIP (2009) and the interview uses semi structured interview. The samples in the interview are chosen by using Multistage Purposeful Sampling model. The type of  research is mixed method. The researcher uses Schmitt’s taxonomy (1997) to classify the strategies based on five VLS. The results show that students use five VLS; (a)Determination strategies, (b)Social strategies, (c)Memory strategies, (d)Cognitive strategies and (e)Meta-cognitive strategies. The mostly used strategy is determination strategy.  It implies that the students tend to use strategy like finding the new words by opening the dictionary which is included into determination strategy. Dictionary is a must to learn a language and to develop a good vocabulary learning skills means that the students can achieve their success of vocabulary mastery by their effort individually.  The researcher assumes that if the students realize to the existence of five VLS, they can maximize those strategies and find the suitable strategies for their achievement in vocabulary learning.

 

Keywords: Vocabulary, Vocabulary Learning Strategies (VLS), Foreign Language (FL), Second Language Acquisition (SLA), Taxonomy.