Preference of Strategy for Learning Vocabulary of Middle School Students While Learning a Foreign Language

Abstract

This study is a descriptive style in scanning model and it is about determining the strategy the students in middle school use for learning vocabulary while they are learning a foreign language (English). The population of the study consists of middle school students in the city center of Kayseri. Stratified Sampling was chosen as a sample choice. Accordingly, while the sample was being chosen, the school type was first considered and 1 private school, 1 high-level 2 middle and 2 low socio economical schools were preferred. In the study, Foreign language word learning strategy was used, which consists of 6 factors and 32 codes and developed by Kocaman ve Cumaoglu (2014) who based the subscales of the strategies in language learning of Oxford (1990). The data obtained was analyzed in SPSS Statistics programme. According to the findings of the study, it was concluded that about learning word strategies, students expressed their opinions as using memory, cognitive, complementary and social strategies in the level of “I seldom use”, and metacognitional and affective strategies in the level of “I often use”. As a result of the study, statistically, in terms of gender variables there was significant difference for girls who preferred to use memory, cognitive, meta-cognitive, affective and social strategies while learning vocabulary. There was no significant difference about using complementary strategy as statistically. Also, the students in high-socio economical schools used the strategies in learning vocabulary more extensively than other students in middle and low socio economical schools.