A Study On Learning Strategies In Senior Middle School ESL Class

It is stipulated in new "National English Curriculum Criteria" that one of the goals of English course is to help students form effective learning strategies. So the study of strategies which will enhance learning efficiency of students and promote teaching activities is really significant and worthy. It will achieve the purpose of reducing the heavy burdens of teachers' as well as students' .The thesis presents investigation on foreign language learning strategies used by students from Dandong No. 2 Middle School. Results show that their strategy use frequency is not very high on the whole and that, especially metacognitive strategies, they are in the least frequency use among three basic categories (cognitive strategies, metacognitive strategies, social strategies and resourcing strategies). And it also shows in my study that good learners employ strategies more frequently than poor learner. Hence, it is extremely necessary to make strategy training to students.The present study intends to investigate, from a cognitive perspective, with the help of the comparative study of good and poor learners, find out if there are differences in learning strategies use between the two learning groups. The author attempts to answer the following research questions:1. Do good and poor Chinese EFL learners differ in their use of strategies in language learning? If yes, then,2. How do good and poor Chinese ESL learners differ in their use of strategies in language learning?3. The research was also intended to find out the most commonly used strategies by both research groups.The thesis consists of six chapters:Chapter One is an introduction, which gives a brief account ofthe background and the value and significance of the present research. At the end, it provides research method.Chapter Two provides a detailed discussion about language learning strategies and it deals with the existing different types of definitions and classifications.Chapter Three mainly presents the investigation on strategies used by senior middle school students and the analysis of the investigation.Chapter Four discusses necessities, theoretical basis, goals and design models of strategy training.Chapter Five provides a simple description on applications of strategy training in ESL teaching.Chapter Six summarizes the present research and gives constructive advice for the future research in this field.