The Strategies Used by International Class Students to Improve Their English Vocabulary

As the English Foreign Learner (EFL) who get a wide exposure of English, international class students are required to have a good vocabulary acquisition in order to support them during the learning process and also promoting them to have a better acquisition of the four English language skills. In this case, vocabulary learning strategies are considered important in helping the learners to develop their vocabulary knowledge. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the strategies used by international class students and its impact to improve their English vocabulary. This research employed a qualitative research method, where an in-depth interview used as the research instrument. The participants were 8 International Management Program students from Economic and Business Faculty of Syiah Kuala University. The results revealed that the international class students applied the five groups of vocabulary learning strategies proposed by Schmitt (1997). It also showed that determination strategies were the most frequently used, while social (consolidation) strategies were the least. It indicates that the students tend to learn independently to support them in expand their vocabulary. Furthermore, the students felt some benefits in implementing vocabulary learning strategies, such as the students’ potential in learning English could be unleashed, a significant improvement on the new insights and knowledges about vocabulary, and they felt the ease in learning vocabulary. However, they also faced some challenges where they had a pronunciation problem, hard to memorize and recalling words, difficult to find a communication partner, hesitation to use certain vocabulary, difficulty in getting used to read from printed learning media, and hard to handle emotional condition. So, based on findings, it appeared that the international class students felt the positive impact and the effectiveness of the strategies used in learning vocabulary but there were still challenges that required solutions in its implementation.