An Investigation On The Relevance Of Normal Students' Strategy Use And Their English Language Proficiency

This thesis intends to explore the relationship between language learning strategies and language learning levels through a questionnaire survey that encompasses a wide range of participants: Normal students' learners and Non-normal students. These participants are supposed to adopt different learning strategies. SPSS13.0 is used to analyze: (1) six language learning strategies held by NSs and NNSs respectively; (2) language learning strategies adopted by NSs and the effects to ELP, (3) ANOVA of NSs' ELP to their strategy use, and then the correlation between language learning strategies and English language proficiency to check whether NSs' preference for certain types of learning strategies is partially determined by their English language proficiency.The part of Introduction deals with the research background, purposes, methodology and the limitation of the present study. Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 together establish a sound theoretical foundation for this study. Chapter 1 is a general survey of the study and background research, Chapter 2 is a general survey of the research on language learning strategies, presenting information about the definitions and classifications of language learning strategies and the limited amount of research on the relationship between language learning strategies and ELP.Chapter 3 elaborates on the situations of the participants, instrument employed in this study, and the process of data collection and data analysis. Chapter 4 shows the results of data analysis firstly and then compares language learning strategies held and employed by NSs, and finally comes to a discussion about the relationship between language learning strategies and ELP. The frequency of overall strategy use of teachers' college non-English majors was not high. The most frequently used strategies were affective strategies and, and the least frequently employed strategies were cognitive strategies. For normal students, the most frequently used strategies were memory strategies, and the least frequently employed strategies were cognitive strategies. For normal students, three learning strategies have significant positive correlation to language proficiency level. According to the correlation value, the rank orders are memory strategy, compensation strategy, and metacognitive strategy. And cognitive strategy (p=.142, sig=.090) is also significant when the significance level is set to 0.1. And affective strategies and social strategies did demonstrate significant correlations with English achievement. Among the six categories of strategies, memory strategies had the strongest correlation with compensation strategies. NSs preferred memory strategies, affective strategies and compensation strategies. They seldom adopt cognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies.These findings are informative in respect to NSs as a group though some are inconsistent with the results of previous studies and some are not. It is hoped that my study can serve as a basis for further investigation of language learning strategies in depth and width. The part of Conclusion, based on the review of the whole study, comprises some tentative suggestions proposed by the author, to English teachers and learners across China.