EFL vocabulary learning strategies among high school students

The paper examines how frequently high school students use EFL vocabulary learning strategies and whether contextual educational factors have any influence on strategy selection. The theoretical part discusses the importance of language learning strategies, which can facilitate the internalization, storage, retrieval, or use of the new language, factors that affect their usage and selection (e.g. nature of the task, students’ motivation, foreign language proficiency, teacher’s expectations, students’ learning styles, students’ gender), as well as the process of vocabulary acquisition. The empirical part presents the results of the analysis of a survey conducted among students from two high schools in Serbia, a vocational school and a grammar school. The aim of the research is to determine how frequently students use vocabulary learning strategies and if there are any statistically significant differences in strategy use between students from the two schools which are the consequence of different subjects and learning objectives. The results show that the majority of vocabulary learning strategies have medium use among high school students (seven out of nine memory strategies, seven out of nine cognitive strategies and two out of four compensatory strategies) and that there are certain inter-group differences (whereas students from the medical high school use memory strategies more frequently, students from the grammar school report higher use of cognitive and compensatory strategies). The results indicate that there are important cross-curricular links which point to the transfer of learning strategies from content subjects to English language classes.