Comparing English Vocabulary Learning Strategies Used by Stuttering and Healthy Students

Learning new language vocabulary is an essential step in the language learning process. Improving language learners’ lexical competence can help them attain proper mastery of language skills. Vocabulary knowledge can be developed through using strategies, such as word–connect, guessing, note–taking, semantic mapping, etc., i.e., related to the cognitive and psycholinguistic research paradigms. Vocabulary learning strategies are techniques used by language learners to acquire the meaning of unfamiliar words, retain words in their long–term memory, memorize these techniques in comprehension, and use them in language production. Empirical studies in the area of learning strategies application among language learners with speech production disorders are scarce. This study aimed to explore the potential differences between the stuttering and healthy English Vocabulary Learning (EVL) learners concerning their use of vocabulary learning strategies.

This was comparative, descriptive, and analytical research. The statistical population of this study consisted of healthy and stuttering students in Rasht City, Iran. Forty eligible male and female students participated in this study in two matched groups, including subjects with childhood–onset fluency disorder and healthy controls (n=20/group). The convenience sampling method was used to select the required samples. The study participants were selected from two high schools among the clients who were referred to 3 speech therapy clinics. According to the speech therapists, all speech therapy clients developed stuttering and were homogeneous concerning the severity of stuttering. All of them were native speakers of Persian and their English language proficiency was at an introductory level, i.e., examined by the Nelson Proficiency Test (Fowler & Coe, 1976). The study participants also completed the Vocabulary Learning Strategies Questionnaire (Schmitt, 1997), using Google Forms due to the coronavirus pandemic. Descriptive statistics, including mean and standard deviation as well as Independent Samples t–test and Kolmogorov–Smirnov test, were employed in SPSS to analyze the obtained data. The significance level of the tests was considered 0.05.

The present research results indicated no significant difference in the mean values of decision–making strategies between students with stuttering and the healthy group (p=0.509); however, there was a significant difference in the mean scores of social strategies between the explored groups (p<0.001). Furthermore, each component of decision–making strategies revealed no significant difference between the research groups (p>0.05). The mean value of the component of "I use a monolingual English–English dictionary to find the meaning of words," was higher in the healthy subjects, compared to their stuttering counterparts; however, there was no significant difference between the research groups (p=0.900). Additionally, examining each component of social strategies, in 3 components, namely "I ask the teacher the meaning of new words" and "I ask the meaning of new words from my classmates," and "I work with my classmates on the new word to find its meaning", revealed a significant difference between the mean scores of the assessed groups (p=0.018, p<0.001, p=0.013, respectively). According to the Oxford Guide, the investigated groups were excellent in respecting applying decision–making strategies and moderate concerning implementing social strategies.

According to the research findings, the examined healthy and stuttering students performed the same in using decision–making strategies and were not significantly different from each other; however, in using social strategies, healthy students performed better. The present study data provided insight into using EVL strategies.