A Study On Learning Strategies Employed By College Art-students In Oral English

Oral English plays an important role in daily communication and second language acquisition. A lot of researches have been made abroad and in China into oral English fluency. However, in the research literature on oral English, empirical studies on learning strategies of oral English (LSOE) are quite few, especially on the study of LSOE employed by college art majors.The present study makes a survey on the overall use of learning strategies employed by college art majors in their oral English learning. Besides, the study explores the difference between the music majors and non-music majors in the use of LSOE and the analysis of the difference.A questionnaire, adapted from Oxford (1990), is administered to 147 college art students from two universities. Their oral English learning strategies are investigated at memory, cognitive, compensation, metacognitive, social and affective levels. On the basis of results of SPSS analysis, an interview is designed in the study to explore the possible explanation for the results. The analyses of the data reveal:1. In general, the investigated students sometimes employ a variety of LSOE at memory, cognitive, compensation, metacognitive, social and affective levels. The frequency of the six broad categories of LSOE is: cognitive strategy > memory strategy >ompensation strategy >metacognitive strategy > social strategy >affective strategy. But on the other hand, the investigated students' employment of these strategies is not very frequent, considering the mean score of each category of strategies.2. Music students more frequently use learning strategies in English speaking than non-music majors. There exist some significant differences in using cognitive and social learning strategies in their learning process.This thesis analyzes these findings respectively, and suggests some pedagogical implications of the research.