Vocabulary Learning Strategies of Graduate Paramedical Students: An Analysis Based on Cognitive Linguistics

Abstract

Words play an important part in utilising a language efficiently. An advanced level of learning the English language for a professional purpose involves the need to understand and remember words that are extremely important to perform the task correctly and efficiently. The paramedical students need the perfect register and the passive language for their specialization and using the correct word at the appropriate situation is a question of life and death. The task of learning vocabulary for occupational or specific purpose needs specific strategies. The assessment has been carried out using a Schmitt’s tool VLSQ (Vocabulary Learning Strategy Questionnaire) to analyse the various ways in which the paramedical students learn and develop their vocabulary. This research is based on theoretical approach of Cognitive linguistics that studies language as it relates to cognition that takes the psychological and anthropological dimensions into significant consideration. The results show that only rote memory method is highly used by them and that the cognitive and metacognitive modes of vocabulary learning strategies to be known to them and that the teachers handling the paramedical students should focus on sharpening their cognitive and metacognitive domains in recording the registers.