Approaches to vocabulary learning and their relationship to success

Students' vocabulary learning approaches were surveyed in two distinct learning environments; one where English was studied as a second language (ESL), and another where it was a foreign language (EFL). A questionnaire, based to some extent on Sanaoui's (1992) work, was administered to 47 ESL and 43 EFL students. Learners were asked to indicate, among other things, the amount of time they usually spent on vocabulary learning, the extent to which they engaged in independent language study, the type of vocabulary learning activity they did on a regular basis, the frequency and elaborateness of their note-taking and reviewing efforts, as well as the frequency and elaborateness with which they used dictionaries. Cluster analysis, a technique used for finding relatively homogeneous subgroups in a population, identified 8 different profiles of student approaches to lexical learning. Analyses were also conducted to determine a possible relationship between strategy use and achievement level. Students' performance on two tests, a Yes/No test assessing knowledge of academic vocabulary, and a cloze test assessing overall English proficiency, were compared for the 8 clusters. (Abstract shortened by UMI.