On English Learning Strategies Of Rural Senior High School Students

Since the middle of 1970s, some foreign linguists have been doingresearch of English (as a second or foreign language) learning strategies.The results show that English language learning strategy would enablethe students to learn more effectively and promote school improvement.In China the research began in the early 1980s. However, it was mainlytargeted at college students. In recent years, more and more studies havebeen carried out on learning strategies employed by senior high schoolstudents. Rural senior high school students are the main force of the highschool students in China. Most of them are lack of academic environmentof English and strong learning motivation. They seldom use learninglanguage strategies. Rural senior high school teachers often focus theirattention on the imparting of knowledge but pay little attention tofostering their students' language learning strategies. Therefore, we thinkthere are some effective ways to improve their learning efficiency,develop their ability of self-directed study and promote English teaching.First, we will make a study of the rural senior high school students'language learning strategy use. Second, we intend to explore therelationship between their language learning strategies and learning result.Finally, we will try to know about the difference of language learningstrategy use between boys and girls. The English Language CurriculumStandards for Senior High School were issued in the year of 2003 byChina's Ministry of Education, which requires the senior high schoolstudents to get the learning strategies appropriate to their needs, and beable to adjust their strategies according to different situations. So the senior high school English teachers should be aware of the importance ofEnglish learning strategies and do some research on it. The teachersshould also try to train the students' English learning strategies in thedaily teaching activities.This paper is based on a survey of 150 rural senior high schoolstudents in Grade Two of No.1 Middle School in Lianyuan, where theauthor works. It is aimed at discovering how the students use Englishlearning strategies and what the existing problems are so that we may findwhat language learning strategies different students are using and whatthe difference of language learning strategy use between boys and girls is.The teachers may also benefit from this study. In all, there are 150questionnaires and 143 are effective, of which 50 are done by girlstudents and 90 by boy students. This study used the famous Americanapplied linguist Rebecca L. Oxford's 50-item Strategy Inventory forLanguage Learning (SILL)(See Appendixâ…¡), of which there are 9memory strategies, 14 cognitive strategies, 6 compensation strategies, 9meta-cognitive strategies, 6 affective strategies and 6 social strategies.The students responded on a five-point scale. The SPSS10.0 software wasused to analyze the survey and then we drew some conclusions throughstatistics.From the collected data and discussion we drew some conclusionsand then made some suggestions. The conclusions are as follows:(1) Girl students use the English learning strategies more frequentlythan boy students. The girl students get higher mean scores than boystudents.(2) The students who do well in the exam use the English learning strategies more frequently than the students who don't do well in theexam. It shows that language learning strategies have a positive effect onthe students' learning results.(3) All the students use the compensation strategy most frequentlyand use the cognitive strategy, metacognitive strategy and social strategyless frequently, the following is the memory strategy and the last is theaffective strategy.Based on the findings above, our suggestions are as follows:(1) The English teachers in rural senior high schools should be awareof the importance of language learning strategies in English teaching.(2) The English teachers should know about language learningstrategies by reading some literature, learning from experts and a varietyof other ways. They should improve their theoretical level so that theycan be more helpful in training the students' language learning strategies.(3) The English teachers should know about what language learningstrategies their students are using and what differences there are. Theycan get information by questionnaire, interviews and observation in andout of class.(4) The English teachers should strengthen the students' languagelearning strategy training in the daily teaching activities so that thestudents can be developed into independent, self-directed and effectivelanguage learners.