A Research On The English Learning Strategies Of Middle School Students

Since the 1970s, the emergence and development of cognitive psychology has laid a theoretic foundation for the research on learning strategies. Previously, guided by behaviorist psychology, foreign language teaching put much emphasis on "how to teach" ,with the study on "how to learn" being neglected, thus resulted in inefficiency in language teaching. At that time, society advanced a new request to education-to cultivate self-dependent learners who absorb new knowledge all by themselves. Set in such situation, the focus on improving learning efficiency for students as well as lessening the burden of obtaining academic success has resulted in researchers studying behaviors specific to learning strategies.The contemporary specialists in education and psychologists have realized that the basic purpose of education is to make students independent, autonomous and effective learners, and to teach them how to learn. These learned behaviors result in students' developing effective learning strategies which result in learning efficiency, as well as translate into academic success for the students at any level. Our has labeled "forming efficient learning strategies" one of the most important teaching purposes. issued in July, 2001 has made the training of students' learning strategies a key aspect in curriculum objective.According to the learners' cognitive process hi learning, this text classifies English learning strategies into: metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies, affective strategies and communicative strategies. The author's questionnaire surveyed 1,100 students from Senior One, No1 Middle School of Huangpi, Wuhan. The study analyzed the learning strategy state of Chinese middle schoolstudents, and provided some approaches in strategy training. Hopefully, all this may serve as a theoretic basis and actual reference in helping middle school teachers with their teaching improvement.This thesis is constituted by preface and five chapters.Preface: the importance in learning strategy research.Chapter One: domestic and international study on learning strategies.Chapter Two: conception and classification of learning strategies.Chapter Three: national requirement and the present state of Chinese middle school students' learning strategies.Chapter Four: causal analysis that forms the present state of the students' learning strategies.Chapter Five: approaches on the training of students' learning strategies.Chapter two and three are the theoretic foundation of the whole text. Chapter four lays the practical basis on which the following training approaches are induced. It is also the creative point of this thesis, since most concerning was on university students in the past researches. Little has been done on middle school students. Chapter five is of most importance and it is the key point in writing this thesis. From theory to practice, the author tries to provide the mass of middle school teachers in their actual teaching activities, with functional training approaches and concrete suggestion hi developing the students' learning strategies.