Learners’ Beliefs about Vocabulary Learning

intrinsic motive. Furthermore, there was also some initiative to note down these words for further reference. Table 4.6. Students’ Responses on Guessing Strategies No Statements SD D A SA Total Respondent Total Score Mean Total Mean 7. I skip words I don’t understand. 11 1 24 44 80 261 3.26 3.32` 8. I use my experience and common sense to guess. 5 65 9 79 241 3.05 9. I guess the meaning and then look at the dictionary when I meet new words in reading. 1 17 41 20 79 238 3.01 10. I use alternative clues and try again if I fail to guess the meaning of a word. 23 36 21 80 238 2.98 11. I make use of my knowledge of the topic to guess the meaning of word. 5 60 15 80 250 3.13 2.93 12. I look at the part of speech of the new word to guess the meaning of the new word. 23 52 5 80 222 2.78 13. I analyze the word structure prefix, root and suffix when guessing the meaning of the word. 1 23 40 16 80 230 2.88 The next use of vocabulary learning strategies to investigate was guessing strategies. To guess the meaning of a word, the learners might use their background knowledge or linguistic clues. The data in the table above showed that a majority of the nursing students with the mean score 3.32 used their background knowledge such as experiences and common sense in guessing the meaning of the words. About 68 nursing students mentioned that they would skip unknown words while reading, and they would attempt to guess the meaning of these words 3.05. Furthermore, if they have failed to guess using a particular strategy, then they would attempt at it again by employing other strategies in guessing of the word. In terms of linguistic clues, a majority of the nursing students employed their knowledge of the word structure in discovering the meaning of the words 3.13. The other strategy related to linguistic clues was by looking at the part of speech where approximately 62 nursing students used it. The rest was by analyzing the word structure such as prefix, root, and suffix to guess the meaning. Table 4.7. Students’ Responses on Dictionary Strategies No Statements SD D A SA Total Respondent Total Score Mean Total Mean 14. I use an English dictionary. 5 29 29 16 80 214 2.68 3.10 15. I use a bilingual dictionary. 8 39 33 80 264 3.31 16. I use the dictionary to find out the pronunciation of the word. 1 8 39 32 80 262 3.28 17. I use the dictionary to find only the meaning of the word. 7 45 28 80 261 3.26 18. I look in the dictionary for the grammatical patterns of the word. 16 44 20 80 244 3.05 19. I look in the dictionary for collocation patterns. 11 56 13 80 242 3.03 20. I use the dictionary to find the appropriate usage example sentence of the word. 12 47 21 80 249 3.11 One of the ways the nursing students to identify the meaning of the word was through dictionaries. The majority of the nursing students mentioned that they preferred to use the English-Indonesian dictionary. There were several purposes of using dictionary. The highest score came from using the dictionary to find pronunciation of word 3.28, followed by finding out the meaning 3.26, usages of the word in context 3.11, and the least was looking at grammatical patterns of the word 3.05. Table 4.8. Students’ Responses on Note Taking Strategies No Statements SD D A SA Total Respondent Total Score Mean Total Mean 21. I have a vocabulary note book to list down new word. 8 41 24 7 80 190 2.38 2.61 22. I write down the English word and Indonesian translation of the word. 1 16 45 18 80 228 2.85 23. I only take note the meaning of the word. 3 29 41 7 80 212 2.65 24. I take note of the usages of the word example sentences, part of speech, etc. 3 20 45 12 80 226 2.83 25. I take note of the synonym or antonym of the word. 15 33 21 11 80 188 2.35 There were various note taking strategies employed by the nursing students. About 31 nursing students reported that they did not a vocabulary notebook. The most common was the writing of unknown English word and its Indonesian translation mentioned by 53 nursing students. In addition, they also listed the usages of the word with the mean score was 2.65 and meaning of the word with the mean score was 2.5. It was interesting to note that only 33 nursing students reported to note synonym or antonym of the word as compared to 48 of them who mentioned that they did not do so. This data could imply that they were unaware of