New Pandemic, New Vocabulary- International Students’ Knowledge of COVID-19 Words and their Vocabulary Learning Strategies

This research aims at finding out vocabulary-learning strategies (VLS) used by international students studying in Australia. The data were collected using Schmitt’s vocabulary learning strategies questionnaire. This project aims to investigate how the International students studying in Australian universities learn new vocabularies related to the new pandemic. With the outbreak of COVID-19, new and emerging words are being used widely to communicate issues related to the pandemic. COVID-19 related vocabularies have become an essential part of understanding the pandemic and its implications for different aspects of students' lives. Therefore, the main aim of this study is to examine which vocabulary learning strategies international students use to learn new pandemic and other words more broadly. Sixty-nine participants rated their use of the vocabulary learning strategies in a questionnaire adapted from Schmitt’s VLS taxonomy. The three preferred strategies are only strategies for discovering a new word’s meaning. Statistical analysis revealed that discovery strategies were most preferred among respondents while consolidation strategies were least referred to. In other words, as a result of the research, it was observed that the participants were influential in determining the vocabulary strategies they used. They used determination strategies the most, while cognitive strategies were the least used. The determination strategy depends on learners' methods to search for new word meanings by using dictionaries or guessing, as evident in this study, and therefore discovering a new lexical element with the help of context.