Relationship among motivation, vocabulary learning strategies and the breadth of vocabulary knowledge: A structural equation modeling study on second language learning

Description

Chunye Yang, Xuedong Yu, Hongshun Li, and Dawit Dibekulu modeled how motivation, study strategies, and word knowledge connect for Chinese students learning English. Their survey and word-test data covered 230 students in Wuhan, mostly in their first two years, analyzed with structural equation modeling.

Motivation sat slightly below the midpoint, and students favored thinking strategies, the direct tactics for working with words, over memory and self-management methods. Motivation strongly predicted strategy use and somewhat predicted word breadth. Strategy use did not predict word knowledge at all once motivation was counted for. No indirect path through strategies appeared either. The authors draw a practical moral: teachers may gain more from feeding students' drive to learn. Drilling strategy sets helps less, since driven students may not turn them into words known.

Catalog record

Source: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/PMC13596826