The prevalence of vocabulary learning strategies among Iranian EFL students

Learning vocabulary has always been a major concern for language learners. The current research was implemented to find out the kinds of Vocabulary Learning Strategies (popular, somehow popular, and unpopular) in Schmitt’s new taxonomy (DET, SOC, COG, MEM, MET) used by English-major students. Fifty advanced English-major students at Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman participated in this study. To this purpose, Schmitt’s Vocabulary Learning Strategies Questionnaire (VLSQ) and the last level of his Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) were used as the instruments. It was found that MEM was the most frequently used category and SOC the least frequently used one. Furthermore, COG, DET, and MET were the second, third and fourth categories respectively. The results of the study can be used by various people involved in language education including materials developers, language teachers, administrators, and other stakeholders may make use of the findings, and at the end of the discussion section, some ways regarding how the mentioned groups can use the findings are provided.