Self-Direction And Vocabulary Learning Strategies

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The approach of taking the learner in the center of language pedagogy increases in recent years. Learners are expected to achieve to be more active participants and have the power of self-direction (Kafipour and Naveh, 2011). Self-direction is an important characteristic among the other language learning strategies. Self-directed learners make conscious choices for finding solutions to problems and organizing knowledge and building skills. Kafipour and Naveh state that it is crucial for students to recognize the meanings of the novel words in a reading text in order to comprehend it. Learners’ familiarity with the vocabulary learning strategies facilitates them to understand a reading text. This recognition of vocabulary learning strategies…show more content…
Schmitt (1997) acknowledges that if one tends to address Vocabulary Learning Strategies, its relation with Language Learning Strategies should not be neglected. The majority of Language Learning Strategies, especially all memory strategies, are Vocabulary Learning Strategies and also they are relevant for the tasks in vocabulary learning. This fact reflects “the importance and popularity of vocabulary learning strategies in the group of language learning strategies in terms of their actual use”. In spite of this fact, scholars in language learning strategies field seem to disregard vocabulary learning strategies, instead, they highlight the entire language learning (Asgari and Mustapha, 2010:…show more content…
The learning difficulty may arise from the characteristics of language learners such as their language proficiency and motivation levels or from the characteristics of the target words. In terms of the difficulties posed by word characteristics, Nation (2001: 23) emphasize that “the more a word represents patterns and knowledge that learners are already familiar with, the lighter its learning burden”. In addition to the degree of similarity between the vocabularies of two languages, other factors can also play role in determining the degree of vocabulary learning difficulties. Carter and McCarthy’s (1988: 13) explanation of these factors is a great help here; “The difficulty of a word may result, interalia, from the relations it can be seen to contract with other words, either in native or target language, whether it is learned productively or receptively; as well as from its polysemy, the associations it creates, its pronounceability, whether it lends itself to keyword teaching techniques and, in the case of advanced learners, from the nature of the contexts in which it is

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