Anguage Learning Strategies Used By English Majors In A Chinese University

Over the past decade, the focus of a growing body of research in second or foreign language learning has been shifted from teaching methodology to individual differences in language learners. Language learning strategies, one individual-difference variable, have gained increasing popularity world- wide. In China, more and more universities are following the world trend by carrying out researches of similar kind. The findings have revealed a lot of problems that Chinese university students have encountered. Many constructive ideas have thus provided. But few researches have ever been conducted for college students, not to say college students in rural area.This study aims to reveal some distinctive features of LLS by the college students in rural area. It investigates the use of language learning strategies by a group of English majors in a teachers' college. The emphasis lies on knowing the general situation of overall strategy use and six strategy categories and on the effect of strategy use on proficiency level, gender and some background information.The study, using Oxford's 50-item Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL), examines the self-reported language learning strategy use of 186 second-year English majors in a teachers' college in Jiangxi rural province . The scores of a nationwide English proficiency test were obtained to classify the proficiency levels. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to determine the effects of certain background variables on learners' mean strategy use on the whole SILL and on the six SILL categories.The findings indicated that students used language learning strategies at medium frequency, both in terms of overall strategy and six categories. The findings also demonstrated that the students varied significantly in their use of learning strategies.