How Engineering Students Acquire Technical Vocabulary: An Empirical Study of Effective Learning Strategies

Abstract

This study examines engineering undergraduates’ vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) to acquire technical vocabulary, a critical skill in today’s globalized engineering landscape. A total of 150 engineering students from ENSAM, Meknes participated by completing an adapted 62-item version of the Vocabulary Learning Questionnaire (VLQ; Gu & Johnson, 1996; Gu, 2018), modified to address the specialized language demands of technical coursework. The instrument demonstrated excellent internal consistency (α = 0.89) and yielded a seven-factor structure corresponding to beliefs about vocabulary, metacognitive strategies, inferencing, dictionary use, note-taking, rehearsal, and activation strategies. Descriptive analyses indicated moderate overall strategy use (M = 4.0, SD = 0.7 on a 7-point scale), with dictionary (M = 4.5, SD = 0.5) and inferencing strategies (M = 4.1, SD = 0.6) being the most frequently reported. Pearson correlations revealed significant associations between technical vocabulary test performance and both dictionary (r = 0.45, p < .01) and inferencing strategies (r = 0.40, p < .01). Multiple regression analysis indicated that these strategies together accounted for 30% of the variance in test scores (R² = 0.30, F(2, 147) = 31.5, p < .001). The findings underscore the importance of targeted strategy instruction in technical curricula and suggest that engineering educators should emphasize activities that enhance contextual inference and precise dictionary use. Implications for engineering education and directions for future research are discussed.