Vocabulary Learning Strategies of Italian-Turkish Bilingual Students: Impact of Simultaneous and Sequential Acquisition

Abstract

Vocabulary learning strategy domain has been one of the areas of research in the language learning strategy field. Bilinguals use different language and vocabulary learning strategies than monolinguals (Hong-Nam & Leavell, 2007; Jessner, 1999). Even though there are numerous studies that investigate and compare monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual language learning strategy use, no studies have been conducted to compare the vocabulary learning strategy use in simultaneous and sequential bilinguals. This paper addresses this gap by investigating and comparing those strategies reported by Italian-Turkish simultaneous and sequential bilingual high school students with a total number of 103 participants, 34 of which are simultaneous bilinguals and the remaining 69 sequential bilinguals. The Vocabulary Learning Strategies Questionnaire (VLSQ) developed by Schmitt (1997) was utilized as the instrument of data collection. We found that simultaneous and sequential bilinguals (a) are medium to high level vocabulary strategy users, (b) report using social strategies the most, (c) do not differ considerably in their choice of vocabulary learning strategy type, but (d) differ substantially in their choices of metacognitive strategy use. The results offer implications for teachers and teacher educators particularly as to how they teach and support bilingual students’ vocabulary learning process in monolingual contexts.