Iranian EFL Learners’ and Teachers’ Beliefs About the Usefulness of Vocabulary Learning Strategies

Abstract

Vocabulary is an important part of language which is central to all language skills and meaningful communication. One way through which vocabulary learning can be facilitated is by the use of vocabulary learning strategies (VLS). VLSs can empower language learners to be more self-directed, regulated, and autonomous. Also, they can help language learners to discover and consolidate the meaning of the words more effectively. Teachers’ and students’ behavior, functioning, and learning are, however, controlled by their thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions. The present study 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, a VLS 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 that strategies such as paying attention to vocabulary forms, functions, and semantic relations; guessing the meaning of new words from the context; and using monolingual dictionaries can be very useful in discovering and consolidating the meaning of new words. They, nevertheless, expressed hesitancy to use L1, bilingual dictionaries, and mnemonic devices. The results of Kruskal–Wallis Test also showed that the preference for a few strategies differed across levels of education.