A Study On Tibetan College Students' English Learning Strategies

The issue of English teaching to Tibetan undergraduates has become increasingly important with the increase of college enrollment and the growth of demand for Tibetan personnel excelling in English. However the difficulty of teaching English to Tibetan college students is beyond the imagination of anyone who has never undertaken such a task. Due to the historical factors, such as deficiency of pre-university English education, tri-culture background, medium of instruction and lower level demand of English in College Entrance Examination, etc. have resulted in a generally poor English level among Tibetan college freshmen. No matter how hard the teachers try, there are always many students who show a tendency to be bored and inattentive in class and to do poorly on tests. To change this situation, research concerning how to improve English teaching in higher education institutions for Tibetans is an urgent need.With the development of teaching research from teacher-centered to learner-centered, research begin to focus on individual differences and learning process. Among the factors that affecting the learning, learning strategy is the most essential one. The education literature suggests that students who are actively engaged in the learning process will be more likely to succeed. A key to getting and keeping students actively involved in learning lies in understanding learning strategies, which can positively or negatively influence a student's performance. Only when students want to learn and know how to learn, will there be ideal results.In an attempt to better the current knowledge about the learning strategies of Tibetan EFL learners and improve the effectiveness of English teaching to Tibetan learners at college level, the present thesis studies the learning strategies of Tibetan learners from a multidimensional perspective. (1) What is the general tendency of the use of learning strategies by Tibetan students in the university? (2)What are the differences in strategy use between male and female Tibetan students? (3) What are the differences in strategy use between second and third language by Tibetan student? (4) What are the differences in strategy use between Chinese students and Tibetan student?The 149 samples are selected from the Tibetan Nationalities Institute of Northwest University for Nationalities. The study is both quantitative and qualitative including a survey and an oral interview. The data obtained from the survey goes through statistical analysis and the major findings are as follows: (1) Concerning the general distributions of Tibetan EFL learners, the data indicates a general use of learning strategies by Tibetan bilingual falls in middle level (3.37), though higher than Chinese monolingual. Social/effective strategies are the most preferred ones, while cognitive strategies are the least preferred. (2)The data also suggests significant differences exist between female and male Tibetan learners in some learning strategies, i.e. social/effective strategies. (3) It is also found that there are significant differences in strategy use between second and third (foreign) language. Social/effective and meta-cognitive strategies fall in high rank, which above 3.4 according to the Oxford's frequency scales. (4) The significant differences of strategy use existed between the two nationalities. The mean score of overall strategy use of Tibetan students was significantly higher than that of Chinese students, (p=0.00) less than 0.05. So LLS are related to cultural background and language learning experience. Based on the major findings of the study, the present author finally ventures some suggestions on how to improve English teaching to Tibetan learners through addressing their learning strategies.