Correlation between the Individual Characteristics of a Person and the Strategies for Foreign Language Acquisition

Under conditions within implementation of the new federal state educational standards in Russia, developing student autonomy has become the main pedagogical concern. Therefore, teachers should inform learners that the application of learning strategies is the key to successful self-learning. The main criteria for choosing effective strategies for memorizing new vocabulary is their compliance with the individual psychological characteristics of a student. The study was conducted to determine effective vocabulary learning strategies for students with high, average and low estimated levels of intelligence and creativity. We used standard psychological tests for assessment (Eysenck and Guilford), a test of achievements designed to measure knowledge of new words and a survey. We discovered that learners’ level of intelligence and creativity should be taken into consideration for selecting appropriate vocabulary learning strategy and facilitating the process of memorization of new lexical items. We assume that this research will inform teachers and students on the importance of selecting proper vocabulary learning strategies.