ROLE OF ROTE LEARNING IN VOCABULARY LEARNING STRATEGIES
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vocabulary learning, so that EFL lecturers could complement their teaching approaches and also serve more
effective teaching.
Recommendations
This study found that the role of RL plays an integral role among MSs in Burmese learner’s vocabulary
learning. Therefore, the findings suggest that there might be some reasons to explain the use of RL in Myanmar.
As mentioned in literature review, Oxford (1990) interpreted many existing research that synthesized eight
factors that have been influencing the preference of L2 learning strategies: (1) motivation; (2) gender; (3)
cultural background; (4) attitude and beliefs; (5) type of task; (6) age and l2 stage; (7) learning style; and (8)
tolerance of ambiguity.
These above factors should be considered why RL strategies are applied in memory vocabularies by
Burmese EFL learners. Of these factors, many previous researches proved that traditional culture is a rather
affected factor on learners’ strategy usage. Li (2005), Hummel (2010), Thompson (1987), and Watkins and
Biggs (2001) who surveyed RL effects on Asian EFL students described that RL is accepted as an effective
learning strategy in vocabulary learning. The present study also gets the similar results like their researches.
Considerably, all these studies suggest that RL strategies in vocabulary learning continue to be widely used in
Asian countries despite having many passive criticisms in western countries. Therefore, specific beliefs held by
particular cultural groups in SL/FL learning should be more investigated by further research.
This study also finds some more reasons of using RL such as Burmese examination system and learning
style, using collaborative MSs together with RL. That alarms to do more further studies on Burmese EFL
learners by tracking these reasons. Moreover, students’ motivation in using VLSs would be an interesting area
for future research. Oxford (1994) described that students with great motivation tended to use more effective
strategies in their learning. Thus, researching motivation on the use of VLSs would be beneficial for future
research that could investigate which kinds of motivation are leading students to use particular strategies in
learning vocabularies.
Another possible research topic might be gender differences in the use of RL among Burmese EFL
learners because many researchers, such as Sheorey (1999) and Green and Oxford (1995) have reported that the
ways female and male learners approach to strategy usage in language learning are different. Therefore, it
would be needed for future research to find out the significance of males’ and females’ RL usage in vocabulary
learning.
Conclusions
This study indicates two main direct implications from the findings, Burmese examination system and
EFL teaching system which might be constructively affected by this study. Moreover, the researchers suggest
interesting areas that would be beneficial to investigate for further research. These include: (1) to explore more
MSs used by Burmese learners besides RL that would play in different role in their vocabulary learning; (2) to
do further research of finding more factors that might affect using MSs to learn vocabularies; (3) to study
possible impact of student’s motivation on the choice of MSs; and (4) to find the significance of gender
differences in the use of RL among Burmese learners that will be effective in EFL teaching and learning system
in Myanmar.
This study has lighted up the role of RL in Burmese learners’ VLSs. Especially, it suggests that the
investigation of the present study might have a favorable impact on MSs. Therefore, the researchers