Research Journal of Recent Sciences _________________________________________________ ISSN 2277-2502 Vol. 3(12), 32-41, December (2014) Res.J.Recent Sci. International Science Congress Association 32 A Comparative Determination of Vocabulary Learning Strategies of Saudi EFL Learners Choudhary Zahid Javid Department of Foreign Languages, College of Arts, Taif University, Taif, KSA Available online at: www.isca.in , www.isca.me Received 18th November 2013, revised 3rd February 2014, accepted 17th April 2014Abstract This empirical study investigates Saudi EFL learners’ patterns of vocabulary learning strategies used by them to learn their discipline-related vocabulary. It also attempts to investigate their preferences towards using various strategies to learn new English vocabulary along gender lines. For data collection a 44-item Likert-scale questionnaire was exploited and given to 82 male and 71 female Saudi EFL learners. Independent-samples t-test was run to calculate the descriptive analysis in terms of means and standard deviations and to see whether any significant differences existed along gender-lines or not. The results of this empirical investigation suggested that Saudi EFL learners represented by the sample of this study liked the determination strategies the most followed by memory strategies. Among the remaining strategies, cognitive, metacognitive and social strategies have been assigned 3rd, 4th, and 5th positions respectively. The results also suggest that Saudi EFL learners exploit various strategies to inference the meaning of new words. It is also reported that Saudi EFL learners do not like note-taking strategies and encoding strategies. It is recommended that EFL teachers working in the KSA should convince their students regarding the pedagogical significance of these techniques and encourage them to maintain vocabulary notebooks, use techniques of learning new words through previously learned knowledge such as exploiting some form of imagery, or grouping. The findings of this study seem to suggest that VLS training should be considered important and need to be given priority by EFL faculty so that effective vocabulary learning may be ensured. This study has the pedagogical implication to acquaint EFL teachers with the psychological underpinnings of Saudi learners related to VLS to train them to maximize their vocabulary learning possibilities. Keywords: Self-reported beliefs; vocabulary learning strategies IntroductionAmong several other dynamics, appropriate and updated knowledge of vocabulary is an extremely important component of effective learning process of English as a foreign language. It has been reported that “vocabulary forms the biggest part of the meaning of any language, and vocabulary is the biggest problem for most learners” (p. 1). Considering the primary role of lexical knowledge in effective ELT and the difficulties of vocabulary learning experienced by EFL learners, “…. one would expect that vocabulary instruction would be at the top of the agenda for language teachers. However, the opposite is often the case” (p. 625). It has been stated that explicit vocabulary teaching is often neglected and EFL learners are left to struggle of their own to pick up lexical knowledge without the required guidance in this regard. Vocabulary learning is a complex process that “involves such abilities as form recognition (pronunciation, spelling, derivations) ………. Knowledge of its specific grammatical properties, however, as well as the ability to use the word appropriately in certain contexts, and its functions” along with mastering its meaning (p. 1). The above-mentioned procedure clearly seems to suggest that vocabulary learning is a complicated process that needs proper attention for ensuring satisfactory result. This lack of suitable and appropriate lexical knowledge hinders the progress of EFL learners in other language learning skills as well. Anderson associated it with slow reading of English language learners that causes major handicap in their learning process. Presence of some unknown words in a reading passage will either result in the failure of the comprehension of the contents or force the reader to quit the reading altogether. Much research has reported that language learners consciously or unconsciously use various vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) to cope up with this situation and an explicit teaching of these strategies is imperative to enable EFL learners to make decisions regarding the effective use of VLS to facilitate lexical knowledge5-7. Literature Review: A growing mass of research established the significance of vocabulary teaching/learning and manifested itself through modified approaches and methodologies in ELT. Talking about the primacy of vocabulary, it is asserted that “without grammar, very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed"(p. 158). It has been stated that language comprises of lexical items connected by grammar and not of rules of grammar filled in by lexis10-11. Research has reported that vocabulary needs of learners are specific based on their personal, professional and academic needs; thus, it should be one of the main focal point of all Research Journal of Recent Sciences _____________________________________________________________ ISSN 2277-2502Vol. 3(12), 32-41, December (2014) Res.J.Recent Sci. International Science Congress Association 33 programmes to equip the learners with appropriate vocabulary related to the field of specialization as well as train the learners to inculcate the skill of acquiring the required vocabulary of their own8-12. It has been reported “that more successful learners, in contrast to less successful learners, employ a group of specific strategies which are related to their success” (p. 159). They further elaborated that “VLS have been characterized as any strategy which affects the process by which words are obtained, stored, retrieved and used”. Since 1980’s numerous studies have been conducted in ESL/EFL contexts which encouraged that VLS should be taught because they are key for successful SL/FL vocabulary learning13-19. The word ‘strategy’ has been derived from the old Greek word ‘strategia’ meaning the steps or measures taken to win a war. Research has reported that these measures can be used effectively when used consciously “prior to, during, or after language performance in order to enhance the use and the learning of a second or a foreign language” (p. 139)20. Four important factors has been included in his definition of VLS stating that these “a) involve choice, that is, there are several strategies to choose from; b) be complex, that is, there are several steps to learn; c) require knowledge and benefit from training; and d) increase the efficiency of vocabulary learning and vocabulary use” (p. 1). The same notion has been presented by Oxford21 who stated that strategies are the processes exploited by successful learners “to aid the acquisition, storage, retrieval, and use of information” (p. 4). She further explains the concept of learning strategies and highlights their significance for enhanced learning possibilities by stating that these are “specific actions taken by the learner to make learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective, and more transferrable to new situations” (p. 8)21. It is defined that the VLS are the “specific strategies utilised in the isolated task of learning vocabulary in the target language” (p.52)22. Though VLS are the strategies which are limited to vocabulary learning but they bear major similarities with general language learning strategies. This overlap may be witnessed in the language learning strategies taxonomy21. Takec22 has suggested four characteristics of VLS which are: i. require selection on the learners’ part, ii. exhibit complexity and necessitate certain processes, iii. depend upon learners’ understanding and can further develop through instruction, and iv. make learning and using vocabulary in L2 more efficient (P. 140). It has been reported that vocabulary learning includes five steps, i.e., to have access to the material containing new words, associate the new word with some auditory or visual image or both, understand the meaning of the new word, establish a vivid memory link between the meaning and the form of the new lexical item and develop an ability to use the newly learned word appropriately23-24. Confirming the significance of VLS in successful learning process, numerous taxonomies have been developed to identify ESL/EFL learners’ VLS. The taxonomy developed Omalley and Chamot25 classified VLS into three categories namely cognitive, metacognitive and effective/social. This classification contained six categories, memory, cognitive, compensation, metacognitive, affective and social strategies categorized under two main groups, direct and indirect: the first three categories included in direct whereas the later three formed the indirect group21. Schemitt19 has developed a comprehensive inventory containing 58 items grouped into two categories: the first category was based on Oxford’s21 social, memory, cognitive and metacognitive strategies with an addition of determination strategies to be exploited by the learners to understand the new words they encountered whereas the second category was based on Nation26 who proposed the discovery strategies to handle, remember and consolidate the new lexical items. Gu and Johnson27 also developed a 74-item VLS taxonomy grouped into six subcategories, i.e., guessing, dictionary usage, note-taking, rehearsal, encoding and activating. Though the role of vocabulary has been emphasized much for effective learning/teaching process of learning English as a second/foreign language, yet its importance has not been fully recognized till the beginning of last two decades of the twentieth century. It has been asserted that vocabulary was not given its due importance “… because of certain dominant teaching approaches in the 1940s until the 1960s” (p. 625)28. They elaborated it further by quoting the examples of ‘structural linguistics by Fries29 and ‘generative transformational linguistics theory’ presented by Chomsky30 which mainly focused on phonological and grammatical structures as the bases of a language; therefore, it has been suggested that the above-mentioned should be emphasised for better and faster learning. It was theorised “that when the learners have learned the structural frames and the grammatical rules, they will then be able to fill in the lexical items as needed” (p. 625)28. It has also been reported that the later approaches such as the one proposed by Rogas31 also considered vocabulary learning process as secondary to functional language use for ensuring communicative competence. All these approaches based their teaching philosophy on the belief that vocabulary does not need explicit teaching and the learners would learn the required lexicon once they have command over the grammatical, functional and phonological structures of the target language32. The beginning of 1980s witnessed an increased emphasis on teaching vocabulary in ELT methodologies to the extent that the controversial lexical approach was presented and supported by many8-10. According to this approach, it was posited that a language consists of lexical items connected by grammatical rules of that language and not the rules filled in by the lexical items of that particular language10. Sokmen33 has recommended that it is important to teach relevant and required vocabulary to ESL/EFL learners because it is “… not possible for students to learn all the vocabulary they need in the classroom” (p.225). Lexical approach, though remains controversial in ELT, has ended the bias against teaching vocabulary explicitly for better results. Research Journal of Recent Sciences _____________________________________________________________ ISSN 2277-2502Vol. 3(12), 32-41, December (2014) Res.J.Recent Sci. International Science Congress Association 34 Research has offered valuable insights into the fact that the researchers adopted three approaches to identify what strategies are more effective for different language learners according to their specific needs34. The first category of VLS studies attempted to find out the efficacy of VLS on real vocabulary learning tasks35-36-37-38, the second category recorded participants’ language proficiency versus vocabulary size as well as used correlation efficient to investigate the frequency of VLS as reported by the participants through self-reported surveys27,34,39,40 and the third category of VLS studies meant to elicit the participants’ perceptions regarding the effectiveness of VLS due to their past language learning experiences13,41,19,36. Though most of the studies conducted to investigate VLS have concentrated on general vocabulary, yet several researchers12,13,42,43 highlighted the differences between the general vocabulary with that of technical, academic and low frequency vocabulary. Scarcella and Zimmerman44 identified the technical words as the ones “… that are used in specific academic fields” (p. 28). It has been explained that technical or specialised vocabulary items, though rarely used in general English texts, are found in high frequency in the specific texts related to specific academic fields43,45,46. Talking about the significance of learning the technical words, Casanova47 elaborated that along with academic success in the specialized fields, learning specialised vocabulary helps in acquiring the culture of that specific disciplinary community. Methodology Research Questions: This study will be directed by the following research questions: i. What are Saudi EFL learners’ patterns of VLS they employ to learn the technical vocabulary related to their discipline? ii. What VLS patterns are reported by the participants of the study to be positively linked to learning of the technical vocabulary related to their discipline? iii. Are there any statistically significant gender-based differences in the use of VLS among Saudi EFL learners? Hypothesis: This research will be centered on the following null hypothesis: Null Hypothesis: There will not be any statistically significant gender-based difference among Saudi EFL learners' patterns of VLS they employ to learn the technical vocabulary related to their discipline. Participants: This empirical study was a cross sectional survey to gather information related to the frequency and effectiveness of VLS from a randomly selected sample that was drawn from the foreign languages department, Taif University (FLD TU). The participants of this study were consisted of 153 male and female Saudi EFL learners studying at Taif University in Saudi Arabia. Instrumentation: A 6-point frequency-scale (never-always) questionnaire employed by Aljdee48 to investigate the frequency and effectiveness of VLS employed by learners to learn the vocabulary related to their disciplines was used for this survey research. This VLS taxonomy contained 44 items. Table-1 LLS items distribution according to 6 types N o VLS strategy Items Total 1 Determination 1 - 9 9 2 Social 10 - 16 7 3 Memory 17 - 30 13 4 Cognitive 31 - 35 5 5 Metacognitive 36 - 44 9 The questionnaire was translated into Arabic so that authentic responses may be ensured. The Arabic version of this structured questionnaire was administered to the participants of the study to record their reliable responses. Participants’ responses were coded, manually entered and analysed by using the latest version of SPSS. Independent-Samples T-test was run to calculate the descriptive data as well as to identify any significant gender-based differences in the responses of the participants. Work Plan: The empirical work for this study was conducted at FLD TU in ten (10) months. One hundred fifty-three (n=153) randomly selected English-major juniors and seniors (male and female) studying at FLD TU were investigated to collect data. The questionnaires was administered to the participants during their regular teaching sessions and they were given appropriate time to read and record their responses. The female colleagues were requested to distribute and collect the questionnaires in the female campus. Data Analysis: The data generated through these questionnaires were carefully synthesized and tabulised to find out the answers of the research questions and to show the differences in the opinions of the male and female participants to test the hypothesis. It has been suggested that “the central tendency of groups is often described in terms of means and medians. Comparing the performance of groups will often involve looking at one or both of these basic characteristics”(p. 154)49. Independent-Samples T-test was run to calculate the frequency of VLS find out any significant differences to test the hypothesis. Result and Discussion This chapter deals with the gender-based comparative results as calculated by independent-samples t-test related to five sub categories of VLS. table-2 reports the data related to determination strategies generated by the responses of male and female Saudi English-major adult learners and both groups assigned relatively high values of more than 4 to the majority of items. The data analysis revealed that both groups favoured stressing the meaning of new words using context clue method followed by use of bilingual dictionaries the most respectively. A growing mass of research has strongly suggested that among determination strategies, use of contextual guessing and bilingual dictionaries are the most commonly used to learn new words. Research Journal of Recent Sciences _____________________________________________________________ ISSN 2277-2502Vol. 3(12), 32-41, December (2014) Res.J.Recent Sci. International Science Congress Association 35 The finding of Dóczi 20 is in the same direction who reported that 98% students use context to guess the new words they encounter and 68% resort to bilingual dictionaries to deal with new vocabulary. The findings confirm the findings of Mokhtar et al.50 who reported that guessing and use of bilingual dictionaries are the most commonly used VLS among Malaysian 1st and 2nd year university undergraduates. The finding is partially in line with Komol and Sripetpun who also reported that Thai 2nd year university students also prefer to use bilingual dictionaries to learn vocabulary. Therefore, it is revealed that Saudi EFL learners are also passive learners of vocabulary as categorized by Gu and Johnson27. Medium mean values were assigned to the items that elicited the participants’ responses towards identifying parts of speech of new words, picture clues or gesture clues whereas use of monolingual dictionaries was rated the least preferred strategy in this regard. Overall rating for the majority of determination strategies remained medium to high indicating that Saudi undergraduates use these strategies more often than other categories to handle new vocabulary confirming the findings of previous studies1-51. Furthermore, results of independent-samples t-test showed that one item exhibited significant difference out of the total nine items in this category revealing that there do not exist any statistically significant differences along gender lines. Table-2 Data analyses of “Determination” VLSProblematic areas in Academic writing Group n M SD T Df p value 1 Questionnaire Item 1 Male 82 3.865 1.488 -1.083- 151 .281 p � 0.05 Female 71 4.112 1.304 -1.093- 150.97 .276 2 Questionnaire Item 2 Male 82 4.024 1.498 -.526- 151 .599 p � 0.05 Female 71 4.154 1.564 -.525- 145.86 .600 3 Questionnaire Item 3 Male 82 3.689 1.546 -.742- 151 .459 p � 0.05 Female 71 3.872 1.620 -.740- 145.65 .461 4 Questionnaire Item 4 Male 82 4.000 1.387 -.399- 151 .690 p � 0.05 Female 71 4.098 1.666 -.394- 136.72 .694 5 Questionnaire Item 5 Male 82 3.902 1.357 -2.135- 151 .034 p 0.05 Female 71 4.380 1.407 -2.129- 146.18 .035 6 Questionnaire Item 6 Male 82 4.365 1.409 -.056- 151 .955 p � 0.05 Female 71 4.380 1.775 -.055- 133.02 .956 7 Questionnaire Item 7 Male 82 4.353 1.391 -.654- 151 .514 p � 0.05 Female 71 4.507 1.510 -.650- 143.61 .517 8 Questionnaire Item 8 Male 82 3.390 1.748 .962 151 .338 p � 0.05 Female 71 3.126 1.620 .967 150.27 .335 9 Questionnaire Item 9 Male 82 4.817 1.145 1.746 151 .083 p � 0.05 Female 71 4.464 1.350 1.725 138.06 .087 Table-3 Data analyses of “Social” VLSProblematic areas in Academic writing Group n M SD T Df p value 10 Questionnaire Item 10 Male 82 2.597 1.284 .519 151 .605 p � 0.05 Female 71 2.493 1.193 .522 150.23 .603 11 Questionnaire Item 11 Male 82 2.548 1.208 -1.208- 151 .229 p � 0.05 Female 71 2.816 1.533 -1.188- 132.43 .237 12 Questionnaire Item 12 Male 82 2.426 1.361 -.708- 151 .480 p � 0.05 Female 71 2.591 1.517 -.702- 141.96 .484 13 Questionnaire Item 13 Male 82 2.378 1.339 1.090 151 .277 p � 0.05 Female 71 2.140 1.344 1.090 147.71 .277 14 Questionnaire Item 14 Male 82 4.402 1.265 .497 151 .620 p � 0.05 Female 71 4.295 1.387 .494 143.02 .622 15 Questionnaire Item 15 Male 82 3.658 1.433 -1.200- 151 .232 p � 0.05 Female 71 3.929 1.345 -1.206- 150.00 .230 16 Questionnaire Item 16 Male 82 3.402 1.472 .772 151 .441 p � 0.05 Female 71 3.225 1.343 .777 150.57 .438 Research Journal of Recent Sciences _____________________________________________________________ ISSN 2277-2502Vol. 3(12), 32-41, December (2014) Res.J.Recent Sci. International Science Congress Association 36 Table 3 details the results of the data analysis for seven items of the questionnaire sub-section that meant to elicit the participants’ responses towards social strategies to learn new vocabulary items. The participants have ranked items of this sub-category lower to medium values: four items were given extremely low values of less than 3 whereas the remaining three items were assigned medium values. This finding supports previous research which also reported that social strategies are not favourite among ESL/EFL learners to learn new words such as Dóczi20 who stated that only 33% participants he investigated use this strategy. The most preferred item as indicated by the highest mean values remained the strategy of asking classmates for the meaning of the new word. This finding supports the previous research such as the study which also reported that Thai university undergraduates also ranked this strategy as the second most preferred for learning new vocabulary. Second highest mean was calculated for discovering new meanings through group work and third highest value remained for their preference for studying and practicing meaning of the new words in a group of students. An interesting finding is that both male and female students do not have significant differences in any of the seven items of this category. The remaining four items were related to teacher’s role in helping students learn new vocabulary items and extremely low values of less than 3 were assigned to all the items by both the groups. This finding contradicts the findings of Javid52 who conducted a study in the same academic echo system to identify their preferred learning styles and found that Saudi undergraduates prefer to have expert teachers who immediately help them with correct answers. Another interesting but pedagogically significant finding is that the participants of this study have exhibited a positive attitude to avoid using Arabic equivalent to learn new words. Rather they showed their liking to figure out the meaning of the new words by indulging in group work and seeking help from their class fellows to reach the correct meaning. Table-4 Data analyses of “Memory” VLSProblematic areas in Academic writing Group n M SD T Df p value 17 Questionnaire Item 17 Male 82 3.9268 1.4382 -.946- 151 .346 p � 0.05 Female 71 4.1408 1.3447 -.950- 150.09 .343 18 Questionnaire Item 18 Male 82 4.1098 1.4824 -1.529- 151 .128 p � 0.05 Female 71 4.4648 1.3714 -1.538- 150.32 .126 19 Questionnaire Item 19 Male 82 3.4268 1.3428 -2.663- 151 .009 p 0.05 Female 71 4.0423 1.5159 -2.640- 141.12 .009 20 Questionnaire Item 20 Male 82 3.6098 1.2546 -2.545- 151 .012 p 0.05 Female 71 4.1690 1.4637 -2.517- 138.83 .013 21 Questionnaire Item 21 Male 82 3.4756 1.2295 -.145- 151 .885 p � 0.05 Female 71 3.5070 1.4528 -.143- 137.90 .886 22 Questionnaire Item 22 Male 82 4.3171 1.3135 .701 151 .484 p � 0.05 Female 71 4.1549 1.5459 .693 138.19 .489 23 Questionnaire Item 23 Male 82 2.9512 1.3689 -2.387- 151 .018 p 0.05 Female 71 3.5211 1.5843 -2.362- 139.40 .020 24 Questionnaire Item 24 Male 82 3.7317 1.6707 -1.223- 151 .223 p � 0.05 Female 71 4.0704 1.7511 -1.219- 145.64 .225 25 Questionnaire Item 25 Male 82 3.3659 1.6140 -1.248- 151 .214 p � 0.05 Female 71 3.6901 1.5909 -1.249- 148.46 .214 26 Questionnaire Item 26 Male 82 3.3659 1.5031 -.563- 151 .574 p � 0.05 Female 71 3.5070 1.5935 -.561- 145.02 .576 27 Questionnaire Item 27 Male 82 3.7439 1.3771 -1.208- 151 .229 p � 0.05 Female 71 4.0423 1.6770 -1.191- 135.64 .236 28 Questionnaire Item 28 Male 82 2.7195 1.3813 -1.699- 151 .091 p � 0.05 Female 71 3.1127 1.4788 -1.691- 144.45 .093 29 Questionnaire Item 29 Male 82 3.3659 1.5831 .619 151 .537 p � 0.05 Female 71 3.2113 1.4920 .621 149.89 .535 30 Questionnaire Item 30 Male 82 3.7439 1.3860 .593 151 .554 p � 0.05 Female 71 3.6056 1.4974 .590 143.93 .556 Research Journal of Recent Sciences _____________________________________________________________ ISSN 2277-2502Vol. 3(12), 32-41, December (2014) Res.J.Recent Sci. International Science Congress Association 37 Table 4 contains the data analysis of memory VLS; the subcategory that has 14 items. The participants allocated medium values to most of memory strategies to learn new vocabulary. Another interesting finding is that for all questionnaire items of this category, female cohort assigned higher values as compared to their male counterparts. The finding related to memory strategies is in line with Dóczi 20 who reported medium and low mean values assigned by the cohort he investigated. Both groups assigned highest value to the item stating that they study spellings of new words to memorise it. The second and third most favoured items were the ones that elicited their responses towards studying the sound of the new words and making a picture in their mind of the new words to learn the new vocabulary partially contradicting the study of Dóczi 20 which revealed that use of these strategies was not favoured among memory strategies as only 40.4% stated that they use spellings and 15.5% reported that they use pronunciation to learn new words in the target language. Extremely low values of less than 2 were assigned by the male students and nearly 3 by the female participants to the items related to the use of ‘scales for gradable adjectives’ and ‘associating the new words with its coordinates’ whereas the remaining 8 items related to different memory related VLS were allotted medium mean values suggesting that Saudi university undergraduates represented by the participants of this study moderately use them to learn and enhance their English language vocabulary. Table-5 Data analyses of “Cognitive” VLSProblematic areas in Academic writing Group n M SD T Df p value 31 Questionnaire Item 31 Male 82 4.1341 1.4295 -.204- 151 .838 p � 0.05 Female 71 4.1831 1.5335 -.203- 144.34 .839 32 Questionnaire Item 32 Male 82 3.9146 1.2881 -2.000- 151 .047 p 0.05 Female 71 4.3662 1.5046 -1.978- 138.74 .050 33 Questionnaire Item 33 Male 82 2.8902 1.5154 -.940- 151 .349 p � 0.05 Female 71 3.1268 1.5940 -.936- 145.45 .351 34 Questionnaire Item 34 Male 82 2.9390 1.6581 .452 151 .652 p � 0.05 Female 71 2.8169 1.6759 .452 147.42 .652 35 Questionnaire Item 35 Male 82 3.5610 1.6487 .795 151 .428 p � 0.05 Female 71 3.3521 1.5865 .797 149.30 .426 Table-6 Data analyses of “Metacognitive” VLSProblematic areas in Academic writing Group n M SD T Df p value 36 Questionnaire Item 36 Male 82 4.9634 1.5189 1.785 151 .076 p � 0.05 Female 71 4.5352 1.4325 1.793 149.87 .075 37 Questionnaire Item 37 Male 82 4.8049 1.4524 1.500 151 .136 p � 0.05 Female 71 4.4366 1.5832 1.491 143.38 .138 38 Questionnaire Item 38 Male 82 4.3415 1.5171 1.753 151 .082 p � 0.05 Female 71 3.8873 1.6865 1.740 142.15 .084 39 Questionnaire Item 39 Male 82 3.3902 1.5694 -.237- 151 .813 p � 0.05 Female 71 3.4507 1.5747 -.237- 147.74 .813 40 Questionnaire Item 40 Male 82 2.9146 1.3895 1.190 151 .236 p � 0.05 Female 71 2.6479 1.3742 1.191 148.33 .235 41 Questionnaire Item 41 Male 82 3.1585 1.4441 .955 151 .341 p � 0.05 Female 71 2.9437 1.3189 .962 150.55 .338 42 Questionnaire Item 42 Male 82 2.9390 1.4085 .281 151 .779 p � 0.05 Female 71 2.8732 1.4825 .280 145.41 .780 43 Questionnaire Item 43 Male 82 2.9756 1.3331 -.523- 151 .602 p � 0.05 Female 71 3.0986 1.5780 -.516- 137.77 .606 44 Questionnaire Item 44 Male 82 3.0000 1.4315 -.402- 151 .689 p � 0.05 Female 71 3.0986 1.6049 -.398- 141.59 .691 Research Journal of Recent Sciences _____________________________________________________________ ISSN 2277-2502Vol. 3(12), 32-41, December (2014) Res.J.Recent Sci. International Science Congress Association 38 Questionnaire items 31 to 35 are related to cognitive VLS and their data analysis has been presented in table 5. Like memory VLS, the participants have also assigned medium to lower values to these five items indicating their medium use of these strategies. The findings are in line with the findings of a growing mass of research in various ESL/EFL contexts1-20-51-50-7. Both groups saw eye to eye to each other and did not show any significant differences in their responses towards cognitive VLS except for one related to ‘writing the new words many times’ in favour of female participants of this study. Like the trend exhibited in the previous tables female cohort allocated higher mean values to nearly all items of this subcategory as well. Both groups assigned highest values to the items that were related to ‘repeating the new words over and over again’ and ‘writing the new words many times’ to help them memorise them properly. Least values were allocated to the items related to ‘keeping a vocabulary notebook for expanding rehearsal’ and ‘making own lists of new words’ respectively showing their disliking for these items confirming the findings of previous research1-50-7that also reported the note taking strategies as the least favoured. The findings also confirm the findings of Javid et al.53 who also reported that Saudi university undergraduates do not prefer writing related activities. Data analysis of the last 9 items related to metacognitive VLS has been presented in table 6 and the participants have shown interesting trends towards various items of this subcategory. The first two item have been allocated extremely high values by both groups which were related to ‘watching English TV channels’ (males: 4.96 and females: 4.53) and ‘using computer programmes’ (males: 4.80 and females 4.43) to develop their vocabulary knowledge. Unlike the trend visible in the previous four subcategories of VLS in which female participants assigned higher values to various VLS as compared to their male counterparts, the results of ‘metacognitive VLS’ exhibited opposite trend as majority of the items were assigned higher values by the male participants of this study. The results offer valuable insights into the facts that Saudi university undergraduates are visual learners and they tend to learn better when watch TV programmes and use computer programmes. The EFL faculty should exploit rich resource of audio-visual and online resources to motivate their students learn vocabulary effectively. ‘Listening to English radio programmes’ remained third among the most preferred metacognitive strategies. As far the least preferred items were concerned, the participants ranked ‘I revise the newly learned words soon after the initial meeting’, ‘I revise the newly learned words using spaced repetition’ and ‘I skip the new words’ the lowest respectively. All these items were assigned mean of less than 3 by both groups. This trend highlights the psychological underpinning of Saudi students that they are not in the habit of reviewing the newly learned material. Considering its pedagogical significance EFL teachers should try to make their students understand the benefit of this rewarding exercise and encourage them to do it to retain and strengthen the newly learned contents. The remaining items were given medium values by the participants. Conclusion The study in hand is an attempt to investigate Saudi English-major adult learners’ preferences towards using various strategies to learn new English vocabulary along gender lines and results of independent-samples t-test did not reveal any gender-based significant differences rejecting the null hypothesis of this study. As far the broad classification is concerned, the participants of this study favoured the determination strategies the most followed by memory strategies where as the remaining three subcategories have been assigned 3rd, 4th, 5th position to cognitive, metacognitive and social strategies respectively. Schmitt19 states that determination strategies are exploited by students when they depend on resources other than other persons’ experience to discover the meaning of new words in the target language. Use of context, guessing, structural knowledge of the target language, reference materials etc. are the other options in this regard. It seems a positive indicator that the participants prefer to exploit various strategies to inference the meaning of new words. Based on the results of this empirical investigation, it is concluded that Saudi EFL learners as represented by the participants of this study do not like note-taking strategies despite the fact that much research has favoured its frequent use to enhance and strengthen vocabulary size54-55-56. Thus it is recommended that EFL teachers working in the KSA should convince their students regarding the pedagogical significance of this useful technique and encourage them to maintain vocabulary notebooks. Furthermore encoding strategies or mnemonics: techniques of learning new words through previously learned knowledge such as exploiting some form of imagery, or grouping19, have also been reported less favoured by the participants of this study. Considering the significance of these techniques in learning new vocabulary as reported by much research 57-58, it is highly recommended that the students should be exhorted to use them effectively. The findings of this study seems to suggest that VLS training should be considered important and need to be given priority by EFL faculty so that effective vocabulary learning may be ensured. This study has the pedagogical implication to acquaint EFL teachers with the psychological underpinnings of Saudi learners related to VLS to train them to maximize their vocabulary learning possibilities. References 1.A Komol T. and Sripetpun W., Vocabulary learning strategies employed by undergraduate students and its relationship to their vocabulary knowledge. 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