An Exploratory Study Of The Language Learning Strategies Used By ESL Adult Students

With the shift of the studying focus from teachers and teaching to learners and learning in the researching filed of the Applied Linguistics, second language/foreign language learners' learning process and individual differences have been widely emphasized. Learning strategy is considered to be the essential element to greatly influence the effect of foreign language learning among all the factors such as age, gender, personality, attitude, learning environment, motivation, aptitude, cognitive style, affect, etc. Learning strategy plays a significant role in college English teaching and learning, however, teachers usually lay more emphasis on teaching while neglecting the students' learning cognition process and methodology. Therefore, there has been an urgent need for the teachers to have a better understanding of the students and combine the learning strategy teaching and training into the college English teaching practice.The paper firstly sort out, distinguish and analyze the various definition and taxonomy of language learning strategies, then looks back into the historical and present literature concerning the second language learning strategy study and mainly deals with two controversial issues within the studying field :(1) whether strategy use is related to language proficiency ;(2) how learners' factors influence the choice of L2 learning strategies.Based upon the learning strategy theory, the paper reports on a systematic and empirical study of the learning strategy feature and preference conducted with a group of adult students. The study aims at answering three questions: (1) frequency of learning strategies usage;(2) the relations between language strategy use and language proficiency;(3) the relations between strategy use and personal factors such as gender, learning environment, cognitive style, etc.Through data collection and analysis, the rank ordering of the strategies accordingto their frequency of usages are Cognitive strategies, Metacognitive, Compensation, Affective, Social and Memory strategies.With regard to the significant difference between strategy use and language proficiency, the results show significant relationships between proficiency and three categories of strategy, with two (metacognitive and social) representing positive variation, and one (affective) representing negative variation. At the same time, there is no main effect at significant level on strategy use between freshmen and sophomore. Significant difference of cognitive strategies was found on self-efficacy between very good and poor students.hi the case study, high achievers commonly have clear goal of English study and they are highly motivated; they adopt good studying habit, their own schedules and arrangements, which are not easily affected by surroundings; they have strong senses of self-motivated study, able to monitor the whole studying process and master good skills to attend exams. On the contrary, low achievers often have a sense of failure about their way of learning English. It is difficult for them to find the most suitable learning methodology. They always feel upset, nervous, bored and depressed in English class and hope the teacher will give them more encouragement, help and attention.The study indicates that learning strategy instruction and training are beneficial to college English teaching and learning. Learning strategies are flexible and various, so the goal of strategy training is to teach students how to select, evaluate and use strategies to facilitate their efforts at learning a foreign language. Strategy training is intended to help students explore ways that they can learn the target language more effectively.This study is characterized by:(l) the adult students nowadays constitute an important part of college English learning, but little research on learning strategy has been focused on them; (2) the studying focus until recently has tended to be on strategyuse, while factors such as learning styles, world knowledge and beliefs, attitudes toward the language, motivation, age and gender have received less emphasis. This research takes up this theme as one of the studying objects;(3) the methodology of domestic learning strategy research is unbalanced; there is need for more empirical research, case study and comprehensive study. This study is base upon both quantitative and qualitative research.