Open AccessIranian EFL Learners’ and Teachers’ Beliefs About the Usefulness of Vocabulary Learning Strategies
Author(s) -
Mohammad Amiryousefi
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
sage open
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.357
H-Index - 32
ISSN - 2158-2440
DOI - 10.1177/2158244015581382
Subject(s) - vocabulary , meaning (existential) , psychology , context (archaeology) , vocabulary learning , mnemonic , test (biology) , mathematics education , foreign language , preference , language acquisition , pedagogy , linguistics , cognitive psychology , philosophy , psychotherapist , paleontology , economics , biology , microeconomics
Vocabulary is an important part of language which is central to alllanguage skills and meaningful communication. One way through which vocabulary learningcan be facilitated is by the use of vocabulary learning strategies (VLS). VLSs canempower language learners to be more self-directed, regulated, and autonomous. Also,they can help language learners to discover and consolidate the meaning of the wordsmore effectively. Teachers’ and students’ behavior, functioning, and learning are,however, controlled by their thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions. The presentstudy was an effort to explore the Iranian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners’and teachers’ beliefs about the usefulness of different types of VLSs. To that end, aVLS questionnaire developed for this purpose was given to 392 EFL teachers and learners.Based on the results of the study, the Iranian EFL learners and teachers believed thatstrategies such as paying attention to vocabulary forms, functions, and semanticrelations; guessing the meaning of new words from the context; and using monolingualdictionaries can be very useful in discovering and consolidating the meaning of newwords. They, nevertheless, expressed hesitancy to use L1, bilingual dictionaries, andmnemonic devices. The results of Kruskal–Wallis Test also showed that the preference fora few strategies differed across levels of education