As a practising teacher I am very much interested in finding out the learning strategies of beginner learners and to what extent the learners are trained to be independent in Hungarian secondary schools. The tendency of beginner learners to frequently voice a wish to learn grammar and vocabulary aroused my interest. Although lacking the opportunities to cover both areas, this dissertation will focus only on vocabulary learning strategies. The exploration takes places in two secondary schools and is about what learning strategies beginner students actually use and which one(s) they would prefer to use in the future while learning vocabulary. The findings indicate that beginner level Hungarian students would need more training of vocabulary learning strategies to be better able to overcome the difficulties of vocabulary learning and become more effective learners.