Investigation Of Strategies In Learning Of Ordinary Senior School Learners Of English As A Foreign Language

In the last three decades or so, based on findings in identification and classification of the characteristics of the"good language learners", as well as the development in applied linguistics and psycholinguistics, considerable research has been done on language learning. The focus has been laid on the factors which affect second language learning. Among these factors, language learning strategies attract great attention from the researchers, who have the hope that these strategies have a causative effect upon language learning outcomes and that they can be trained in some way to facilitate the learning of languages. Therefore, it is of great significance for us to study learning strategies.To have a better understanding of learning strategies, we must take a great number of factors into consideration, for instance, language learning theories, personal factors of the learners, influence from the environment. In previous researches, more emphasis has been put on strategy use of English and non-English majors in universities.Therefore, one of the aims of this paper is to review the major findings from research done on EFL learners'learning strategies both in the West and in Chinese-speaking contexts. The relevance and applicability of the western research findings in the Chinese EFL situation will be discussed. From a history point of view, language teaching and language learning has witnessed a shift in emphasis, namely, the research on language teaching methods has been dominating for such a long time that second language learning was almost teacher-centered before 1980s. Another task is to find out what learning strategies are favored by learners in Ordinary Senior Middle Schools. Since the students in Ordinary Senior Middle Schools as a particular group, what about their English study? Can't they adopt some learning strategies in English study? Which learning strategies are often adopted? So what can we use to help them apply to the English learning strategies?The study will be conducted mainly through a proficiency test, a questionnaire and interviews. Finally, the paper will draw some cautious suggestions and implications for EFL learning and teaching in common senior middle schools.