Language Learning Strategies And Their Effects On Test Performance

The present study sought to investigate the learning strategies of Chinese high school students and their effects on NMET performance in an EFL context by using a sample of 395 students from Guangdong province in China. Rebecca Oxford's Strategy Inventory for Language Learning was employed to study six types of learning strategies: memory strategy, cognitive strategy, compensation strategy, metacognitive strategy, affective strategy and social strategy and their effects on the reading, listening, writing, cloze, grammar and oral test performance of NMET.The general statistical results of the study indicated that Chinese high school students in general employed a variety of learning strategies to study English at a medium frequency level. Compensation strategy, metacognitive strategy and cognitive strategy received relatively higher level of usage, while memory, affective and social strategy were reported to be used less frequently.To find out whether there is any difference in strategy use among high, middle and low proficiency students, ANOVA was employed to analyze the variance of learning strategies among groups of different proficiency. And it was found that more proficient students appear to use learning strategies more frequently than lower proficient students, which suggests that a good control and frequent use of learning strategies lead to success in language learning.In exploring the relationship between learning strategies and test performance, correlation analyses show that learning strategy is positively significantly correlated to language performance. The finding is consistent with the results of previous studies and confirms the hypothesis of the present researchthat learning strategy is one of the important factors in accounting for languageoutcomes for Chinese high school students.Regression analyses were conducted to determine the effects of different categories of learning strategies on the sub sections of NMET. It was found that cognitive and compensation strategies are the most powerful constructs in accounting for the test score variation for Chinese high school students. Memory strategies, which mainly deal with the memorization of words, might negatively affect the test performance in reading and listening comprehension. Metacognitive strategy is conducive to the development of students' grammatical knowledge. This seems to suggest that different kinds of learning strategies may contribute to different aspects of L2 proficiency.The significance of the study lies in that it provides information on the type and frequency of learning strategies used by Chinese high school students and how strategies might impact their performance on NMET. It also provides information on which types of learning strategies seem to be beneficial to "good" test performance and which do not, thereby complementing the research on behaviors related to successful and unsuccessful language learning. In sum, the findings of the study will cast some light on and have great implications to Chinese EFL teaching, learning and future studies.