Abstract
This research explores the awareness and the attitudes towards vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) of undergraduates from the Faculty of Education in a Thai university. All 300 participating students from 13 academic majors completed a questionnaire survey consisting of both closed and open-ended items. The participants demonstrated favorable perceptions of VLS (M = 3.88) with particular regard to remembering information and succeeding academically. Awareness of VLS was found to be moderate to high (M = 3.65) with the most familiarity stemming from the use of dictionaries and repetition. Language majors demonstrated greater awareness in contrast to non-language majors (p < 0.01) while perceptions tended to be consistent across participants. Students' qualitative responses complemented the findings, stating a need for more explicit teaching in addition to describing the benefits and challenges. The study suggests incorporating VSL instruction into all subjects to promote independence and retention among learners, particularly in content-focused classes where language learning is usually inappropriately incorporated.
