Vocabulary Learning Strategies Employed by Good Language Learners of Business English Majors at Khonkaen University
Abstract
The purposes of this study were 1) to investigate types of vocabulary learning strategies employed by good language learners of Business English majors, and 2) to examine how they use vocabulary learning strategies. The participants of the study were thirty third-year Business English majors in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Khon Kaen University. The research instruments used in this study were 1) the questionnaire and 2) interview. The statistics used for data analysis included means ( ) and standard deviation (S.D.). The results indicated that for the discovery strategies, the good language learners used English-Thai dictionaries and Thai-English dictionaries as well as guessing meanings from context clues. They looked at other features in a dictionary including parts of speech, the phonetic alphabet, multiple meanings, and example sentences. Moreover, they utilized context clues of sentences and paragraphs to discover the meaning of new words. For the retention strategies, the good language learners retained new words by listening to English songs and the English conversation of other people. They also studied pronunciation and spelling. In addition, they reported listing words in a notebook and then reviewed the words often. Moreover, they used sentences to recall and memorizenew words. For the expansion strategies, the good language learners expanded the word knowledge by taking notes in class and using English media.
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