A Research On Oral English Learning Strategies In CALL Environment

Oral English, as a means of communication, is becoming more and more important. The ultimate aim in language learning is to acquire communicative competence. From this point of view, we can see that the aim of language learning is to speak freely in this kind of language. Recently, English teaching has been improved a lot after a series of college English instruction reform, but it still cannot meet the requirements of the society, especially in the aspect of oral English teaching. For a long period of time in the past in China, many learners could not speak English fluently, accurately, or appropriately, though they have learnt English for many years. With the fast development of society and the increased openness to the world, the need for proficient English speaking in many fields such as business English is increasing. Therefore, people are becoming more and more aware of the significance of speaking, and more emphases have been put on the improvement of the learners' speaking ability and increasing attention has been paid to oral language learning. From the mid-1970s, research of learning strategies of second language learners has attracted much attention of researchers in the field of second and foreign language acquisition. The paper has an overview of various learning strategies of many scholars and introduces the characteristics of oral learning strategies.Meanwhile, the rapid development of computer technology in the past decades opens up a way to CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning), which can be defined as the search for and study of the computer assistance in language teaching and learning. It has extended advantages for oral English learning. With the help of the technological advantages of CALL and the rich on-line information resources via computers, the instruction of oral learning strategies could be carried out in a more effective and convenient way. Oral learning strategies in CALL environment are the focus of the presentresearch.Stimulated by the recent development in the research area of oral learning strategiesboth in China and abroad, the author, by means of a questionnaire, conducted a survey of the application of oral learning strategies with 80 English majors in Jinan University. The main purpose was to study what oral learning strategies are most generally used in oral learning with CALL, what oral learning strategies the successful students tend to adopt, and the correlation between learning strategies and oral English achievements. To ensure the validity and veracity of the statistics, SPSS14.0 was adopted.The results of statistical analysis revealed that there is a positive correlation between the students' learning strategies and their oral achievements. In CALL environment the successful students tend to use metacognitive, memory and affective strategies more frequently than the less successful ones. Based on the results, the author made some pedagogical suggestions on the instruction of the teaching and learning strategies in CALL environment. In particular, the strategy training integrated with CALL is recommended for language teachers' consideration. It is the author's hope that the present thesis will contribute to research in oral English learning strategies in college, and benefit learners in class and arouse the attention of both language instructors and learners on strategy-based instruction in their teaching and learning practice with CALL environment.