Résumé:
Learning a language entails learning its vocabulary. Nonetheless,
vocabulary learning is considered as a common source of difficulty for foreign
language learners (Meara, 1980; McCarthy, 1988). It has been highlighted as the
most challenging obstacles that students have to overcome (Singleton, 1999;
Schmitt, 2000). The present research is an exploratory case study that
focuses on exploiting the vocabulary learning strategies that first year EFL LMD
students frequently use and perceive useful to enlarge their repertoire. It also
aims at showing the approaches they employ in order to promote their
vocabulary acquisition. Seventy random under-graduate students were asked to
fill in a questionnaire, were submitted to a survey and a vocabulary test. Besides
to this, an examination of copies and classroom observation were done. Three
pioneer theories are relied on to analyse the data gathered namely, Schmitt’s
taxonomy (1997, 2000), Sanaoui classification (1995), and Clouston research
(1996). The results show that vocabulary learning strategies are perceived as
very useful by students though they are not often used. Concerning the
approaches students adopt while learning vocabulary, the majority of them are
classified under the unstructured approach which corresponds to what is
referred as ‘poor learners’. In order to encounter these difficulties, some
pedagogical implications are suggested to raise students’ autonomy towards
using vocabulary learning strategies.
