The Learning Styles and Use of Vocabulary Learning Strategies of First-year Vocational College English Majors

Abstract: The current study takes vocational college students as subjects and aims to solve the following four questions:1)What are the style preferences of the sampled students? 2)What is the general picture of vocabulary learning strategy use of these students? 3) Are there any possible links between students' learning styles and their use of vocabulary learning strategies? 4)How are learning styles and vocabulary learning strategies related to the students'test performance?The sample consists of 223 first-year English majors from Yiwu Industrial & Commercial College. Two survey instruments, the Learning Style Questionnaire (LSQ) and the Vocabulary Learning strategy Questionnaire (VLSQ), were administered to investigate the students'style preferences and use of vocabulary learning strategies respectively. A vocabulary size test was also used to place students into different groups so that comparisons could be made.In a search for answers to the questions above, the major findings of the current study are listed as follows:Firstly, the students show a tendency of being multi-style learners. The mean difference of each learning style indicates that the students are more global, intuitive, visual and extroverted than analytic, concrete-sequential, auditory and introverted. The data analysis reveals no significant difference between low achievers and high achievers in their learning style preferences.Secondly, the statistics indicate a medium use of vocabulary learning strategies by the participants. Cognitive strategies are more frequently used than metacognitive strategies, and social/affective strategies are the least frequently used. Some individual strategies such as dictionary use, guessing, and rote learning are the most favored by the students. And a comparison of the high-score students and the low-score ones in their strategy use shows that the former has a more frequent use of almost all the strategies than the latter.Thirdly, statistical analysis reveals that students' learning styles have a great impact on their choice of vocabulary learning strategies.Finally, it can be noticed from the study that one learning mode-the concrete-sequential learning negatively correlates with the vocabulary test result. And a close link is found between the participants' use of vocabulary learning strategies and their test performance.The findings of this study lead to final conclusions that learning styles and vocabulary learning strategies are two factors affecting vocabulary learning, and there is a close link between these two factors.Based on the findings of the study, pedagogical implications have been discussed. However, due to various reasons, the findings of the current study should be considered tentative and interpreted with caution. Further studies are needed to explore more on this topic…
Key words: learning style; vocabulary learning strategy; vocabulary size; descriptive statistics; correlation analysis