A Study Of Language Learning Strategies Used By EFL Students In Senior High Schools

Influenced by cognitive psychology, applied linguistic researchers have conducted a shift of their research interest from language teaching to language learning during the past three decades. Research focus has been centered on the investigation of learners' social, psychological, and affective factors. Language learning strategy has gradually become a major concern in the area of second or foreign language learning. Many studies, in general, have convincingly evidenced that learning strategies closely correlate with L2 language achievements. However, most of the previous studies of language learning strategy took college or university students as their subjects.The present study, using Oxford's (1990) Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) (version 7.0) combined with a semi-structured interview, seeks to assess Chinese senior high school learners' use of language learning strategy. It explores the effect of two variables, gender and language proficiency, on frequency and types of strategy use in an EFL setting.The subjects were 130 high school learners in Nanchang No. 1 High School, Jiangxi province. They were randomly selected from four of the twelve classes in senior Grade Two. The reason for selecting them is that these second-year students had spent half of the time of their stay in senior high school (6 semesters in total) so they got entirely conditioned to their study and have shaped their own learning styles and learning strategies. All respondents have received five to seven years of English instruction at the primary and high school by the time of this study.The general statistical results of the study indicated that Chinese senior high school students in general employed a variety of learning strategies to study English at a medium frequency level. Among all the subjects the most frequently-used strategy category was compensation category followed by cognitive, metacognitive, social, and affective category, with memory category the least used.Consistent with some previous SILL studies, the present survey again confirms...