A Tentative Study Of College English Learning Strategies In CALL Environment

From the mid-1980s, research of learning strategies of second language learners has attracted much attention of Chinese researchers in the field of second and foreign language acquisition under the Chinese culture and language background. However, research on language learning strategies in China is still in its early stage. Almost all the subjects in previous researches are English majors while the majority of EFL learners in colleges and universities are non-English majors, so it seems necessary and reasonable to survey them. The paper has an overview of various learning strategies of many scholars and introduces the characteristics of learning strategies.Meanwhile, the rapid development of computer technology in the past decades opens up a way to CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning), which can be defined as the search for and study of the computer assistance in language teaching and learning. With the help of the technological advantages of CALL and the rich on-line information resources via computers, the instruction of learning strategies could be carried out in a more effective and convenient way. College English learning strategies in CALL environment are the focus of the present research.The present study is meant to make a tentative study of College English language learning strategies in CALL environment of non-English majors at Hohhot Vocational College. The data and information are collected through questionnaire and some interviews. One hundred and thirty-two one year non-English majors from the college participate in this investigation. SPSS 10.0 is employed to analyze the data.The main purpose was to study what learning strategies are most generally used in College English learning with CALL, what learning strategies the successful students tend to adopt, and the correlation between learning strategies and College English achievements.The final results revealed that there is a positive correlation between the students' learning strategies and their English achievements, though the frequency of total strategy use of college non-English majors is not high. In CALL environment the successful students tend to use memory, metacognitive and affective strategies more frequently than the less successful ones, especially in the use of metacognitive strategies. Metacognitive strategies are the strongest positive predictor of English achievement, while social strategies are negatively associated with English achievement. Meanwhile, there's no significant difference is found between male and female students, or between the arts students and the science students.Based on the results, the author made some pedagogical suggestions on the instruction of the teaching and learning strategies in CALL environment for the college non-English majors. It is the author's hope that the present thesis will contribute to research in College English learning strategies, and benefit learners in class and arouse the attention of both language instructors and learners on strategy-based instruction in their teaching and learning practice with CALL environment.