Effects of Teaching a Vocabulary Learning Strategy and Processes Underlying Individual Differences Observed: Collaboration Between Researchers and a High School Teacher

Abstract

In the present study, in order to examine changes in students' use of strategies and the processes behind individual differences in those changes, a researcher (the first author) taught a vocabulary learning strategy, and a teacher (the second author) supported the use of that strategy, to 33 students in 1 tenth-grade class. The strategy taught involved relating English words to other information. The data were the strategies used by the students from April to July and in the following February. The results revealed that the use of the strategy taught continuously increased. Interviews were conducted with 3 students who began to use the strategy more frequently in their daily studies, and 2 students who did not use it much after the researcher's instruction. The students who used the strategy reported that they had recognized problems with their vocabulary learning strategies used before the instruction, and that they had realized the effectiveness of the new strategy compared to what they had been doing. On the other hand, the students who did not use the new strategy very much had not been aware of any problems with their vocabulary learning. These results suggest that the strategy taught by this researcher-teacher collaboration may have long-term effectiveness. It is important to compare a target learning strategy to learners' prior strategies.