The Effects Of Language Learning Strategy On The Language Learning Of College Students

In the early 1970s, language teaching research shifted its focus away from different teaching methodologies and made the learner the center of its attention. Many ESL researchers began to take note of the strategies good ESL students use while learning the language, claiming that successful language learners have their own "special ways of doing it" (Stern, 1975). On the premise, most of the research in the field of language learning strategies focused on the distinguishing, description and classification of the strategies. Afterwards, a heated argument was held in the Chinese and foreign teaching field. It focused on three factors: the feasibility of the strategies training, the necessity of the strategies training and the ways of the strategies training. In recent years, researchers have reached a consensus on the controversial issues, just like what Wang Lifei and Wen Qiufang said: "From the First International Researching Class, we got an important information: strategies not only can be trained, but the training must be held on over a long period of time, becoming one component of the foreign teaching curriculum. And the ideal training way is to integrate the strategies training into the regular foreign language teaching" (Wang Lifei ,Wen Qiufang, 2003).Recently, in China, the research of leaning strategies has come into an all-round developing stage: researching methods are gradually becoming various, researching range is gradually widening, researching results are constantly emerging. However, most of the research focus on the descriptive research not the experimental one; lectures and short-term training courses are the main ways to train; cognitive strategies as one of the main categories of learning strategies are the core of the training; reading as one of the important language skills is the stress of training.However, the strategy training is a systematical program, and only training one kind of strategy is not effective. Meanwhile, in the course of teaching practice, we realize most of the students find listening the most difficult in the four skills. Many students do not know how to practice listening after class and even lose confidence in improving listening.In view of the present situation, the study carrys out an experimental training program on metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies and social/affective strategies. "Metacognition is self-appraisal and self-management of cognition"(Paris and Winograd, 1990). Through cultivating metacognitive strategies, learners can make plans, select learning modes, monitor learning process and evaluate themselves, and they can know "how to learn" and become their learning's dominators. According to O'Malley and Chamot (1990), cognitive strategies operate directly on incoming information, manipulating it in ways that enhance learning. They are more directly related to individual learning tasks and entail direct manipulation or transformation of the learning materials. Social/affective strategies represent a broad grouping that involves either interaction with another person or ideational control over affect. It plays the role of restriction and regulation in the selection of other strategies.The study integrates the listening strategies training into the regular listening class. The purpose of the training on the first year non-English majors in Taishan College is to investigate the effects of the training on learners' learning. Here, the effects include the effect of improving strategies awareness, the effect of improving the ability to learn independently, the effect of improving the confidence in listening learning, the effect of improving the listening achievements, etc.The thesis is composed of five chapters. At the beginning, the theories and concepts related to the language learning strategies are reviewed. They include the definition and classification of learning strategies, the related theories of strategies training and listening comprehension, etc. And this provides the foundation of understanding the whole thesis. Among the rich and sometimes overlapping theories, the theoretical framework of the thesis is found. It suits the characteristics of the study and the actual situation of the participants.First, O'Malley and Chamot's classification of language learning strategies is taken as an illustration. In their opinions, language learning strategies have been differentiated into three categories: metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies and social/affective strategies. Second, Oxford's theory of strategy training is employed. According to Oxford (1990), language learning strategies can be taught in three different ways: awareness training, short-term strategy training, and long-term strategy training. The improvement in the strategies awareness is beneficial to the implementation of strategy training and it is also regarded as the guarantee of the training effect. But it will be realized in the long-lasting strategy training and strategy use. In the study, the listening strategies, especially the cognitive listening strategies are integrated into the regular listening class and trained for nearly one semester. As for the metacognitive and social/affective strategies, besides digesting and embodying them in the regular listening course, we mainly adopt lectures and discussions to train them. Finally, with regard to the model of strategy training, we employ the models of Oxford's, Pearson and Dole's and Cohen's. In view of the above-mentioned theories, with different researching instruments, the study course is divided into three stages: pre-training stage, training stage and post-training stage.In the pre-training stage, the pre-training test is first applied to divide the students into the controlling group and experimental group. The two groups are well-matched in English learning levels. Then the pre-training questionnaire and the pre-training interview are employed to find out the subject's strategy use, and find their difficulty in listening comprehension and list the major strategies that need training. Finally, the post-training interview, post-training questionnaire and post-training test are utilized to testify the effects of language learning strategy on college students.From the above-mentioned findings of the data analysis, we find that the students' strategy awareness, especially the metacognitive awareness is improved greatly, and in consequence of that, the rate of utilization of the strategies is increased greatly. And the high rate of utilization of the strategies is closely related to students' outperformance in listening comprehension test. In addition, the strategy training helps students achieve learner autonomy and improve their confidence in listening learning. In brief, students benefit a lot from the strategy training. In the last chapter, the study's pedagogical and practical implications are discussed. Without doubt, as with all studies of this magnitude, there are various limitations.