INVESTIGATING VOCABULARY LEARNING STRATEGIES OF EFL UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS AT INDRAPRASTA PGRI UNIVERSITY

Abstract

There are many aspects connected with vocabulary learning so that English as a Foreign Language (EFL)learners have to know and understand vocabulary learning strategies to improve their vocabulary. A vocabularystrategy is a special instructional tool and way of going about directly or explicitly as well as independent wordlearning skills required to learn words independently. Dealing with the reasons, the main purpose of the presentresearch is to investigate the use of vocabulary learning strategies employed by EFL undergraduate students inthe third semester, academic year 2014/2015, majoring English Education at Indraprasta PGRI University.According to Schmitts classification, vocabulary learning strategies for this research are classified asdetermination, social, memory, cognitive, and metacognitive strategies. The research data were collected byusing Schmitts Vocabulary Learning Strategies (VLSQ). There were 137 undergraduate students from semesterIII of English Education Program were involved in this research. The results of descriptive statistics showed thatthey were as medium strategy users with the mean score of 3.26 and standard deviation of 0.93 for overall
strategy use. Furthermore, the most frequently strategies used were metacognitive strategies while the leastfrequently strategies used were cognitive strategies.

Keywords: Vocabulary Learning Strategies, EFL Undergraduate Students