A Survey On English Learning Strategies Adopted By Rural Junior High School Students

The new Criteria for English Curriculum, which is redesigned by China's Ministry of Education in 2001, stipulates that the using of the effective learning strategies is one of the main goals for English elementary courses. It is not only helpful to improve students'learning efficiency and reduce their learning burden, but also enhance our nation's education quality when teachers teach students how to learn. In the end, it cultivates students'independent learning ability and makes them become independent learners for life time through teaching students how to learn. As there are few studies on learning strategies about junior high school students, especially in rural areas, the thesis aims to make a survey about learning strategies on rural junior high school students and some suggestions are to be put forward.In the theroy area, the thesis first discourses the definition and classification of learning strategies, as well as factors affecting the learners' choice and use of learning strategies. Moreover, it presents three theoretical foundations:L2 acquisition theory, cognitive learning theory and social psychological theory. Finally, it reviews the previous researches on learning strategies both at home and abroad.The subjects of this survey are 525 students who are from three levels of three rural junior high schools in Shahe of Hebei. The SPSS 16.0 for Windows is applied to analyze the data. The thesis surveys rural students'using of learning strategies by employing the quantitative analysis method and using the questionnaire from the new Criteria for English Curriculum's classification of learning strategies and Oxford's classification of affective strategies. The results manifests that students in rural junior high schools do not frequently employ learning strategies in their English study. As for the difference of using learning strategies between genders, there exist evident differences in the using of learning strategies between genders, and girls employ learning strategies more frequently than boys. With regarding to the differences of using learning strategies between grades, the results show that significant differences exist in using learning strategies among these three grades, but there is no evident difference between Grade Eight and Grade Nine students.In addition, Grade Seven students use learning strategies the most frequently, Grade Eight the least frequently, and Grade Nine students in between.In the end, some major findings and conclusions have been drawn from the data analysis, and then implications have been put forward for the students and teachers in the rural junior high schools to reference in their English study and teaching.