2021 Volume 69 Issue 4 Pages 366-381
The present study examined how the learning strategies used by secondary school students who are studying English vocabulary differ across grade levels, and the extent to which the effectiveness of those strategies may differ across grade levels, and also investigated factors that may influence those strategies. Japanese junior high school students (grades 7-9; n=233) and high school students (grades 10-12; n=304) completed questionnaires. ANOVA showed that a repetition strategy was the most used by the students at all grade levels, and that the use of an association strategy and a utilization strategy did not change or declined across increasing grade level. Vocabulary size was found to be correlated positively with an association strategy only for those students who were in the ninth grade or higher, which suggests that the association strategy may be important as learning progresses. Multiple population analysis revealed that strategy use and learning goals influenced vocabulary size for the high school students, although none of the variables measured was found to influence the vocabulary size of the junior high school students. The results suggest that there was no increase in the use of an association strategy by the high school students, even when that strategy was effective. Teachers should use the results of this study to improve students' learning of English vocabulary.
