An Investigation Of Language Learning Strategy Application By Non-English Majors In CALL Environment

This thesis aims at investigating the present situation of the use of Language Learning Strategies by non-English majors in Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) environment. As the educational reform continues to heat up, computer-assisted language instruction and learning have become a new trend of foreign language education. In such a general background, how well non-English majors can adapt to this new learning environment has become a hot spot in the field of foreign language teaching. Numerous studies have confirmed that rational use of appropriate learning strategies could ensure the effectiveness and proficiency improvement of second/foreign language learning. Therefore, practical and urgent importance lies in a series of researches to investigate how language learner should use Language Learning Strategies in this new environment. Once existing problems are clearly presented, analysis of the causes and the proposal of countermeasures can be expected.Although there have been some researches on English learning strategies in China, few research has focused on CALL environment since CALL environment has just appeared in China in the latest decade. Therefore, in the current study,433 non-English majors were selected from 13 classes who have learned English in CALL environment for one year, and then their use of LLS was investigated with three focuses:the general application situation, how the use situation varies according to sex and how it varies according to language proficiency.The research instrument is SILL (7.0) created by Oxford, through which the research data were collected, and then after analyzing by SPSS (17.0) software, results gained answer all the three research questions.The results show that application proficiency of English learning strategies by non-English majors in CALL environment is only at the medium level according to Oxford's standards. And it is not relevant to gender. However, the result proves obvious correlation between the application frequency and the language proficiency of students. The successful language learners used learning strategies more frequently than the low achievers. The general difference of strategy use between the two groups is statistically significant with p=.008 <0.05.