EFL Vocabulary-Learning Strategies of Saudi undergraduate and postgraduate Students.

Abstract

This study investigates the vocabulary-learning strategies used by Saudi female university students in learning English as a foreign language, focusing on four areas: discovering meaning; storing and memorizing meaning; learning pronunciation and memorizing spelling. Participants were 46 female students (26 undergraduate and 20 postgraduate) in the College of Education, Taibah University. A questionnaire was developed containing 40 items, 10 for each of the four learning areas, reflecting possible learning strategies. Respondents indicated their frequency of using each strategy on a 5-point Likert scale, where 5=always, 1=never. The findings show that students used a variety of cognitive, metacognitive and social strategies. They particularly favoured asking the teacher (for meaning) and using the affordance of internet capable mobile phones. However, in general, the level of strategy use, especially for spelling, was not high. A need is identified for training students in vocabulary-learning strategies and incorporating such strategies in curricula.