An Investigation Into Grammar Learning Strategies Employed By Chinese Vocational College EFL Learners

Language learning strategies are important and helpful to each learner in the process of language learning, which can enable students to take responsibility for their own learning by enhancing learners autonomy, independence, self-direction, raising the students' consciousness of learning, releasing their learning pressure and increasing their learning efficiency. Therefore the training of learning strategies is one part of quality education and life-long education.The role of grammar teaching in second language learning has changed overtime from a central aspect of second language teaching and the main activities of language classroom for centuries to be less prominent even abandoned in some cases in the early 1970s. In recently years, with growing concern about accuracy in learners' language more attention has been paid to a reassertion of grammar in syllabus design and the content of lessons because without a good knowledge of grammar, learners' language development will be severely constrained.Learning strategies play a major role in self-directed learning and using grammar correctly constitutes a significant part of language proficiency, so a research into learning strategies with regard to grammar is necessary for foreign language teaching. In term of the experimental study of foreign language specific learning strategies during the recent two decades, Wen Qiufang and Wang Lifei (2004a) found there was few study focusing on learning strategies of grammar used by learners up to the date. The author of the present paper got the same result when doing literature review abroad or at home.Nowadays vocational education is called for well-developing in China. The number of students in vocational colleges is so large that we should not neglect vocational education. However the English proficiency of vocational college students is on a lower level. As an English teacher in a vocational school for nearly ten years, the researcher of the present study have known well of the students' confusions on grammar learning. English grammar has long been their top concern as well as their big headache, for sometimes they may not understand a sentence even if they know the meaning of each word in a sentence. To help vocational college students to learn grammar more efficiently and effectively, it is necessary to know about what they actually do with grammar in their English learning process. It is necessary to explore what attitudes they actually hold and what learning strategies they actually use in their English grammar learning process. This can contribute to know the current situation about their grammar learning strategy use and will offer the help for the future English teaching. Furthermore, such an investigation may be the base for strategy training of grammar learning. This study takes cognitive theories and language learning strategies as its theoretical foundation and employs an interview and a questionnaire as research methodologies to investigate the use of grammar learning strategies by 171 non-English major vocational college students in the Broadcasting & Television College of Gansu Province and try to discover the answers to the following three research questions:1) What attitudes are held by the Chinese vocational college students to grammar learning?2) What grammar learning strategies are employed by the Chinese vocational college students?3) How does the use of grammar strategies vary with different language proficiencies of the students?The thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter one introduces the background, significance and purposes of the present study. It provides current situation and importance of grammar learning strategies in the learners' learning process. Chapter two is literature review, which mainly reviews the studies made previously by experts and scholars abroad and in China on language learning strategies and grammar learning strategies, and the researches on the relationship between the uses of LLSs and the scores of SFL as well as the relationship between learners' attitudes and language learning strategies use. Chapter three serves as the theoretical framework of the present study. Cognitive theories will be first presented, including information processing framework, declarative knowledge & procedure knowledge, and three stages of skill acquisition. Then based on the definition of language learning strategies, the working definition of grammar learning strategies will be induced as "specific actions taken by the learners to make grammar learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, and more transferable to new situation during the process of mastering grammar knowledge and developing grammar competence". Finally the classification of grammar learning strategies employed in this investigation will be drawn from the O'Malley & Chamat's and Oxford's taxonomy of language learning strategies and divided into four types: metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies, affective strategies and communicative strategies. Chapter four is the research design and procedure, which describes the research subjects, instruments applied to the investigation, the research questions of the study, the designing of the questionnaire, the procedure of the investigation, and methods adopted for data collection. Chapter five presents the key results and discussion. It is the vital part in the thesis, which makes the description about the research results in detail. All the raw data are dealt with Excel software and SPSS 13.0. Both qualitative and quantitative results are interpreted in attempt to answer the three research questions. Some discussions are made according to the results of data such as the attitudes to grammar learning held by these vocational college students, most-used GLS and least-used GLS, frequencies of total and four sub-strategies used in grammar learning and the GLS differences between good language learners and poor language learners. Chapter six draws some conclusions and gives some implications and pedagogical suggestions. The analysis about the results of the investigation shows most of the subjects agree that grammar learning is very important and it is impossible to master a foreign language without grammar learning. They admit that grammar is not easy to master unless with great patience and hard working. They like to use new-learnt grammar forms in a communicative situation instead of reciting them mechanically. It is important for them and their foreign language learning to make short-term and long-term plans and to reflect their methods and progress constantly. Although they understand the importance of planning, self-reflect and self-evaluation, the investigation shows that they do not often use them in practice during the process of EFL learning.The investigation also shows a clear picture of grammar learning strategies employed by Chinese vocational EFL students. The favorite grammar strategies used by the subjects are preview, review, relying on instruction, practice, translation, self encouragement, and self comfort. They are not good at monitoring, error collection, drilling, and communicating strategies. The subjects choose affective strategies as the most frequently used, whereas, they take communicative strategies as the least frequently used during the process of grammar learning. Such a result is opposite to some foreign and Chinese researchers (Chamot, et al, 1987; Li Jongying, 2002) that affective strategies are usually the least frequently used. Another finding shows that high language proficiency students use more strategies for grammar learning than low language proficiency students, which is consistent with the discovery of Rubin (1975), O'Malley (1985), and Wen (1995) which shows good learners lay stress on the use of metacognitive strategies.This research will be helpful for the author of this thesis and other vocational college English teachers to realize the importance of grammar learning strategies and intentionally employ a strategy-based instruction by weaving grammar learning strategy training into regular classroom according the learning differences of their students, which could raise the students' consciousness of using grammar learning strategies, introduce them to properly use of grammar learning strategies; and help them cure the "headache" which grammar is hard to learn but have to master, and make them master grammar quicker, easier, and more effective. More importantly such instruction can make the students independent, self-directing and responsible for their own learning and effectively improve the quality of vocational college English teaching.