A Correlational Study Between Language Learning Strategy And Academic Self-efficacy Of High School Freshmen

In the past few decades, the research of language learners has become a hot topic in the field of foreign language teaching. Language learning strategies are the specific actions, behaviors, steps, and techniques that the students use to improve their progress in second language skills. Researching how the learning strategies are used by the language learners helps us have a better understanding of their skills in the second language acquisition. The previous studies have proofed that the use of learning strategies influences the learning achievements. The effective use of learning strategies can help the students to raise their learning achievements. Learning is a complex process which involves many interrelated factors. So it is necessary for us to combine different factors pertaining to the learners in our study to get a better understanding of second language acquisition. The affective factors are also the influential aspects which affect the learners'achievements. Therefore, we should try to integrate the affective factors into the research of language learning strategies. Self-efficacy is the important factor which influences the achievements of the students. According to Bandura's theory, academic self-efficacy refers to the students' convictions about their own capabilities for successfully executing a course of action that leads to a desired outcome. It exercises great influence on the learning strategies use. The previous studies have proofed the positive correlation between self-efficacy and learning strategies. But most of the studies take the college students or the grade three students in senior high school as the research subjects. The studies about the freshmen of senior high school are few and lack the comparisons among different schools. This thesis selects the freshmen from three different senior high schools as the research subjects, and tries to find out the present conditions of the high school freshmen's language learning strategies use and academic self-efficacy level. At the same time, this thesis discusses the correlation between language learning strategies and academic self-efficacy, and compares the differences among the three schools. The differences between the city-level school students and the county-level school students and the differences between the public school students and the private school students are found in this thesis. This thesis collects data from the questionnaires which are tested among the three schools'students. After the analysis of the SPSS 13.0 software, the following results are discovered.1. Both language learning strategies and academic self-efficacy are in the moderate level among the three different schools'students.2. Both the learning strategies use and the academic self-efficacy level are significantly different among the three schools. In the learning strategies use, the county-level school's students are higher than the city-level school's students; the public school's students are higher than the private school's students. In the academic self-efficacy level, the county-level school's students are also higher than the city-level school's students; the public school's students are higher than the private school's students.3. There is a positive correlation between language learning strategies and academic self-efficacy.Based on the findings, the author gives implications for raising the learning strategy use and self-efficacy level so as to facilitate English teaching and learning practice.