Strategies used for learning english vocabulary and occurrence of errors in English

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to investigate effects of strategies for learning English vocabulary on grammatical and usage errors in English. In Study 1, items relating to English vocabulary learning strategies that had been collected from 15 undergraduate students through a semi-structured interview method were given to 182 high school students and 184 undergraduate students; 4 factors relating to English vocabulary learning strategies were extracted. High school students (N = 157) participated in Study 2, the purpose of which was to create an English grammatical and usage error scale. Factor analysis resulted in the extraction of 1 factor, from which 12 items were used to form the English grammatical and usage error scale. In Study 3, the relation between the English vocabulary learning strategies from Study 1 and the English grammatical and usage errors from Study 2 was analyzed by structural equation modeling (SEM). The participants were 123 high school students and 301 university students. The results revealed that, among the 4 strategies examined, the use of the strategy of paired association vocabulary learning was related to the occurrence of English grammatical and usage errors.