A Study On High Achiever And Low Achiever Students’ Vocabulary Learning Strategies And Their Overall Academic Achievement: The Case Of Asassa And Tijo Wakentera Secondary Schools (Grade Nine In Focus).

Abstract

The present study aimed at investigating the relationship between vocabulary learning strategies and overall academic achievement of high school students. The assumption made in this study is that to help them learn new vocabulary items faster and retain them for a long time. The high achieving students utilize a particular vocabulary learning strategy or set of strategies which are different from that of the low achieving students. The subjects of this study were 44 high achiever and 44 low achiever students in Asassa and Tijo Wakentera Secondary Schools. Questionnaire and Semi-structured interview were used to collect data from the respondents. The English version questionnaire developed by Schmitt (1997) was translated into Amharic and Afan Oromo to make clear for the respondents. The data collected through questionnaire were inserted into a computer by using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 20 to calculate the t-test value. Both qualitative and quantitative data analyses were employed. The percentage and mean values were analyzed to identify the most and the least frequently used Vocabulary Learning Strategies while the t-test was calculated to see if there was a significance difference between high achievers and low achievers in p<0.05. The high achiever students employed most of the strategies more effectively than the low achiever students. The result revealed that there is a significance difference between high achievers and low achievers in using Vocabulary Learning Strategies. This implies that there is a relationship between Vocabulary Learning Strategies and overall academic achievement. The study confirmed that Cognitive substrategies (M=3.90) were the most frequently used strategies whereas Social sub-strategies (M=2.69) were moderately used strategies by high achiever students. In addition, the study asserted that low achievers moderately used Cognitive sub-strategies (M=2.98) whereas the same group have rarely used social sub-strategies (M=2.31) under discovery strategy. Therefore, students who frequently used cognitive vocabulary learning strategies scored better result than those who moderately used the strategies. Based on the above findings, the researcher recommended training on vocabulary learning strategies for low achievers and creating favorable classroom environment which allows low achievers share the good experiences of high achievers.