Instructors often lament on students' limited critical reading skills due to "vocabulary deficit." Therefore, this study investigated the vocabulary size and vocabulary learning strategies of 120 ESL respondents in a tertiary institution in Malaysia. Data were collected using a vocabulary test, a questionnaire, and semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed that the most favoured strategies were "determination strategies" which reflected respondents' usage of shallow thinking while least

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... favoured were "cognitive strategies" that demanded higher-level mental processing. No significant difference was recorded in strategy use based on gender. No relationship was found between the respondents' vocabulary size and vocabulary learning strategies. Keywords: tertiary students; vocabulary learning strategies; vocabulary size. eISSN: 2398-4287 © 2020. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v5iSI1.2318