A Study On The Spoken English Learning Strategy Training Of College Students

The studies on second language learning strategy training abroad and at home started in the 1990 s. They have provided numerously valuable empirical statistics and pedagogical implications for the following researchers. At the same time, some problems are also exposed in this field such as the insufficient empirically pedagogical studies. It is necessary to note that there are less spoken English studies on learning strategy training. As the proportion of requirements for spoken English in the job interview increases, more and more college students have come to realize the importance of spoken English and appeal for the college course to improve their spoken English proficiency. Based on such situation, the author conducts a survey to find out the current situation of college students’ strategy usage and then carries out the spoken English strategy training on them by constructing training model appropriate for college students’ proficiency. The aim of the thesis is to explore the correlations between the strategy training and spoken English learning in order to help college students search for the effective ways to improve their spoken English ability and finally promote their autonomous learning.Two classes of the same level in spoken English are selected as the experimental class and controlled class respectively for the comparative studies. The study instruments adopted in the thesis include the questionnaires, oral tests, class observations and interviews. The whole study is conducted in three procedures: pre-test, strategy training and post-test.(1) Pre-test: in order to verify the necessity and effectiveness of strategy training and construct the training model in accordance with students’ proficiency, the author carries out a survey of their current state of strategy usage and holds an oral test by means of Oxford’s SILL and PET3 respectively.(2) Strategy training: the whole strategy training is conducted both implicitly and explicitly. The specific training contents cover all the six learning strategies: the meta-cognitive strategy, cognitive strategy, affective strategy, social strategy, compensation strategy and memory strategy. In order to ensure the effectiveness of the training, the author also conducts class observations and interviews during the training process to know students’ attitudes toward the training and help them deal with the problems when they apply the strategies in their spoken English learning.(3) Post-test: after the training, the author conducts a questionnaire and oral test on both experimental class and controlled class once again in order to test the effect of the training.In the end, the author analyzes the data both qualitatively and quantitatively. In terms of the quantitative analysis, the author does the independent sample t-test and paired sample test by means of SPSS software. And the findings show that after the training, the experimental class has improved much in both the strategy usage level and oral test scores compared with those of the controlled class and the previous experimental class before the training. As far as each learning strategy being concerned, the differentials about mean scores of both the meta-cognitive strategy and cognitive strategy are the largest ones. Besides, according to the Pearson Product-moment Correlation Coefficient(PCCS), r=1 means that the strategy usage level and oral test scores are highly correlated. In order to ensure the validity of the experiment, the author also conducts the qualitative analysis on class observations and interviews. The findings reveal that students of the experimental class have improved much both in the strategy usage awareness and the oral proficiency. What is more, students are found to be more likely to apply the meta-cognitive strategy and cognitive strategy into their spoken English learning than the other learning strategies.Three questions are involved in the study: 1)What is the current state of college students’ spoken English learning strategy usage? 2) What is the relation between college students’ spoken English learning strategy usage level and oral test scores? 3) What impact does the training model exert on college students’ spoken English learning?The research shows that the strategy training model is effective as a whole. The conduction of learning strategy training has improved students’ spoken English strategy usage level and promoted their spoken English learning. In addition, the findings also reveal that the improvement of the level of spoken English learning strategy usage has a positive effect on their oral English scores. They are highly correlated with each other.