A comparison of students' and teachers' perceptions on the use and instruction of vocabulary learning strategies

The aim of the present study was to unearth and compare student and teacher perceptions on the importance and application of the use and instruction of vocabulary learning strategies. The reason for incorporating both students' and teachers' perceptions into the scope of the research is to obtain a complete picture of the vocabulary learning and teaching process. In this descriptive study, 548 ninth grade students studying and 56 English language teachers working at ten different Anatolian high schools in Antalya constitute the research group. Student and teacher questionnaires and interview forms were used for data collection. Convergent mixed methods design was adopted as the research design. The quantitative data were gathered through the questionnaires administered to participant students and teachers, and the qualitative data were collected by means of the semi-structured interviews that were conducted with 20 students and 10 teachers selected among the participants. While quantitative data were subjected to statistical analysis during the process of data analysis, qualitative data were examined by means of descriptive analysis. The results of the analysis indicated that students and teachers are of the same opinion in terms of the considerable importance of the use and instruction of vocabulary learning strategies, and it was acknowledged that there is no statistically significant difference between the levels of importance attached to the use of vocabulary learning strategies by the students and the levels of importance attributed to the instruction of strategies by the teachers. However, regarding the application of vocabulary learning strategies and strategy instruction, it was identified that while teachers report actively teaching a wide variety of vocabulary learning strategies, students implement the strategies to a more limited extent for lexical development, and that teachers' application levels of the instruction of vocabulary learning strategies are significantly higher than students' application levels of vocabulary learning strategies with the exception of cognitive strategies. It was also found that the vocabulary learning strategies that are ascribed a higher level of importance are used by students and taught by teachers to a significantly larger extent. Based on these results, it is recommended to investigate and discern the reasons for the discrepancy between student and teacher perceptions regarding the implementation of vocabulary learning strategies and strategy instruction and to generate effective solutions for strategy instruction to better reflect on students' implementations. It is pointed out that more systematic studies of strategy training might be carried out by this way. Keywords: vocabulary learning strategies, student and teacher perceptions, strategy instruction, lexical development