The Study Of Language Learning Strategies Used By Foreign Students Learning Chinese

Over the past three or four decades, the research into language learning strategies became an important part of language acquisition research. There has been a considerable amount of research into learning strategies of English and other Indo-European languages, but not of Chinese. The research into Chinese learning strategy, which arised in the late 1990s', have bored early fruit. But it is far from enough to the actuality of the publicity and promotion for Chinese all over the world.Summed up the research into the second language learning strategies at home and abroard, this paper adopted the Oxford's Strategy Inventory for Language Learning(1990) to conduct a questionnaire survey, supplemented face-to-face interviews, and discussed the overall use and influence factors of Chinese learning strategies, and the attitudes towards its teaching and learning for foreign students. In this paper, with the help of SPSS13.0 statistical software, statistical methods in psychology such as the description of the statistical analysis and ANOVA are performed to analyze data on the questionnaire.The survey found that, above all, foreign students most often use compensation strategies, followed by the cognitive strategies, social strategies, metacognitive strategies, memory strategies, and emotional strategies. Secondly, one's mother-tongue influences his use of strategies significantly. English subjects are the most active in using strategies, while Koreans the least. The use of compensation strategies differs typically among subjects of different mother tongue. Thirdly, learning time does not markedly affect the use of strategies. The longer you learn Chinese, the less you use in strategies. Six-month subjects are the most active in using strategies, and more-than-two-year subjects are the least users. Fourthly, different learning motivations of foreign students influence their using of strategies to a certain degree. In overall average, the ones with work motivation use strategies more than those with other motivations. However, in the use of specific strategies, the ones with interest motivation supersede any other ones. Last but not the least, the existing type of instruction in learning strategies does not apply to the foreign students.According to the conclusion of the survey and interview, we have put in place a web-based type of instruction in Chinese learning strategies, and made a recommendation to the teaching and learning of this language.