Learner Factors And College English Teaching

This thesis attempts to explore the impact and the significance of embedding strategy-based instruction (SBI) in classroom English teaching. It aims at helping English language teachers to find a new breakthrough in their efforts to improve language teaching and learning efficiently. Based on detailed investigation and discussion, the thesis focuses its attention on the study of individual learner factors affecting the strategy choice. The author therefore suggests that college English teaching involves not only the imparting of knowledge, but also the cultivation of conscious adoption of learning strategies. This suggestion is further backed up by an empirical experiment made by the author. Through questionnaires and oral interviews, the author tried to see (1) how the learning behavior of the students involved in the experiment is changed with conscious cultivation of learning strategies, and (2) how the learning outcome is related to the strategies chosen. The research findings have shown that learning strategies and strategy training do facilitate students'learning. They enable students to develop proper learning attitude, enhance motivation, adjust learning strategies, and increase their confidence. The effect of strategy training is influenced by various factors such as the learners'present language proficiency, the difficulty of the learning task, the complexity of certain strategy, and the teachers'knowledge of the learning strategies as well as the techniques used in strategy training. These findings may be of some pedagogical significance for both EFL learners and teachers. For learners, on one hand, strategy awareness and training may enable them to develop autonomy and responsibility in the process of learning and thus lead to a better achievement. For teachers, on the other, strategy awareness and the need to bring SBI into their curriculum may urge them to play a new role in their English teaching and thus improve the effectiveness in their efforts to raise EFL teaching qualities.