An Empirical Study Of Spoken English Strategies Of Postgraduate Non-English Majors

The study on learner strategies is a hot topic both in second language acquisition and foreign language teaching. Researchers have done much in theoretical and empirical studies since the middle of 70's last century. Tough there are a lot of disputes in the definition and classification of learner strategies, one thing is in common: strategy use has some relationship to language proficience. Studying language learner's strategies can provide enough information on how learners facilitate their learning and how they overcome the difficulties they meet with kinds of strategies. Then teachers can know what strategies they often use and teach students which strategies are appropriate to choose in concrete conditions. Thus both learning and teaching can be improved. Learner strategy study has developed quickly in China, but few studies take postgraduates as objects. Even few investigate their spoken English. Postgraduates, as the talents with high professional knowledge, are more likely to be involved in some international academic communications. But in fact, most postgraduates in non-English majors cannot speak fluent English, though they are looked on as good English learners (they have passed postgraduates entrance examinations; many of them have passed CET-6). Based on this fact, the author conducted an investigation among the postgraduate non-English majors in University of Petroleum, China. Questionnaire was designed in light of experts'definitions and classifications of learner strategies and Oxford's (1990) Strategy Inventory for Language learning (SILL). Data were collected by giving out questionnaires. Good speakers were found by the information offered in the questionnaire and the observations in their spoken English class. By comparing the use of strategies by good speakers and average speakers, some conclusions have been reached: good speakers are supposed to be good overall strategy users; good speakers are better learning strategies users, while average speakers have the tendency of using more communication strategies; there is no clear distinction in using production strategies between the two groups. The findings shed some light on both language learning and teaching.