Vocabulary Learning Strategies Used by Students of English Department at University of Islam Malang

Abstract

Vocabulary is one of the basic components in learning a foreign language. Students need to learn many new words to make it easier to communicate with other.Infact, Students faced some difficulties in learning vocabulary, such as how to find the meaning of unfamiliar words, how to keep them in memory and how to use them by exercising and increasing their vocabulary. Consequently students need to have some suitable strategies to overcome some of the problems they face in vocabulary learning. Students need several strategies to facilitate them in learning vocabulary. Based on all the explanations above,the research addresses two research objectives: (1) to measure the intensity of use of strategies in learning English vocabulary (2) to compare the use of the strategies in learning English vocabulary by high and low achievers. The researcher applied quantitative method. It was carried out specifically through ex-post-facto research. The researcher classified quantitative data. The subjects of the study were 70 of second-semester students of the English department at the University of Islam Malang. They were asked to complete questionnaires of strategies of learning English vocabulary and vocabulary tests. Both of the instruments were designed in the form of Google form. Analysis of the average score for each category of strategy was carried out using descriptive statistics to evaluate the intensity of learning strategies. The ultimate research is the provision of independent sample t-tests to measure differences in the use of strategies among high and low achievers. The results of the data analysis using SPSS 20.0 software program showed that there is no dominant category of strategies used. All strategy categories are used equally. In addition, it can be seen that social strategy was the students' most commonly used strategy in vocabulary learning because it had the highest mean score of 3.58 and the Memory Strategy category was the least used vocabulary learning strategy with the lowest mean score of 3.40. The mean score of overall vocabulary learning strategies implemented by the University of Islam Malang English Department students was 3.50. It means that the students implemented vocabulary learning strategy suggested by Schmitt (1997) in the "high frequency level" predicate. Furthermore, the analysis of the difference between high and low achievers in the use of strategies showed that there was a significant difference in the use of vocabulary learning strategies with the p- value (.003) that is lower than .05 (<.05). It means that there is significant difference in the use of vocabulary learning strategies between high and low achievers. It indicates that the use of vocabulary learning strategies by high achievers are more intense than low achievers ones.