An Investigation On English Learning Strategies Used By Uyghur College Students

Kashgar Teachers College is the sole institution of higher learning in south of Xinjiang.It takes the responsibilities of training high school teachers for thirteen counties which belong to Kashgar.Compared with the normal college students,Uyghur college students are very different in the study of English,since they are beset with difficulties of three languages together,such as,mother tongue,Chinese and English.Moreover,there are not many researches on English learning strategies used by the minority college students.Due to these reasons,this study investigates the English language learning strategies used by Uyghur students in Kashgar Teachers College.One purpose of the study was to explore the overall use of English learning strategies used by Uyghur college students and get some useful pedagogical implications for English teachers in the future.On the basis of the former relevant studies on language learning strategies at home and abroad,two instruments are used in the survey;one is questionnaire(see Appendixâ… ), and the other is interview(see Appendixâ…¡).The basic instrument is the Strategy Inventory for Language learning(SILL,Oxford,1989).The data is analyzed with the aid of SPSS(Statistical Package for Social Science) 13.0 for Windows.The content of the survey includes:(1) The Uyghur students' overall English learning strategy use;(2) The relationship between language achievements and English learning strategy use;(3) Difference in the overall strategy use between the more successful students and the less successful students.The findings of the analysis include:(1) The Uyghur college students use English learning strategies at a medium to high level.(2) There is a positive correlation between language achievement and learning strategy use and the application of learning strategy has great effect on the students' achievement.(3) There is a significant difference in the overall strategy use between the more successful students and the less successful students.The frequency of strategy use of more successful students is higher than that of less successful students.According to the results and analysis on the survey of students learning strategy use, the author provides four suggestions:(1) The English teachers should pay highly attention on English learning strategy training in the English classroom and aim at helping the students develop the ability of using language learning strategies.(2) The English teachers should train the Uyghur college students to integrate all the six categories together.(3) The English teachers can train the less successful students by using the strategies conducted by the successful students.(4) Highly control the time between strategy training and language training.