Training Underachievers' Learning Strategies In Teaching English In Junior High School

Besides developing students' comprehensive language abilities,training students learning strategies,teaching students how to learn and cultivating students' autonomous learning for their life-long learning are also significant aims in middle school English teaching.According to The Standard of National English Curriculum issued by the Ministry of Education in 2002,teachers should arouse students' interest,build up students' confidence,form good learning habits,develop effective learning strategies in learning English(as a foreign language).Learning strategies are one of the five goals in new curriculum(2003).Whether students can efficiently use learning strategies or not has direct affect on the result of their study.Therefore,to make teachers as well as students aware of learning strategies and to train students how to use learning strategies efficiently are of great significance.Researches on English learning strategies provide new sights and ways to improve the English teaching quality in middle school.They help to link the theories of foreign Language learning to the practice of middle school English teaching. Training students learning strategies can help students to learn more effectively,to achieve better result in English,to improve their language ability,and to be life-long autonomous learners.Hence the study of learning strategies is of vital importance.Many scholars both at home and abroad(eg:Wen Qiufang Oxford 1990;O'Malley & Chamot 1990;Cohen 2000)have done a lot of researches on foreign language learning strategies,which are on the notion,classification and research methods,and have gained fruitful results.But the previous researches mostly focus on theory.The study of learning strategies focusing on the practice such as training students learning strategies is far from enough.And most of these studies are concerned with college students and not middle school students.At the same time,most English teachers in middle schools are still lacking in knowledge of learning strategies,so it is very imperative to study learning strategies in middle school.On the other hand,the underachievers are at a disadvantageous position in learning and they need more care from the teachers,the parents and the society.It becomes more necessary to study the underachievers because once they can use the learning strategies effectively,they can be more strongly motivated and will improve their English more quickly,and the improvement of learning strategies must have very significant influence in their life.Therefore,in our study,we train the underachievers' learning strategies respectively for a semester and one year(a semester stands for short-time training,one year means long- time training),proving that English learning strategies training to underachievers has positive results.What's more,using different training methods correctly and training students' learning strategies for different period of time can improve underachievers' learning English in different grades.This thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter One is the introductory part.It gives a brief introduction to the realistic and theoretical background of the thesis and sets the aim for the present study.Chapter Two is the literature review.It does some terminology clarification work such as the notion,the classification and the characteristics of underachievers in the middle school,the notion and the classification of the learning strategies.It also goes into the details of the theoretical basis adopted by the present study,namely,the affect of learning strategies on underachievers and the ways of training students learning strategies.Chapter Three goes into the details of how to carry out the learning strategies training to the underachievers.We define the three experiment class and contrast class according to the results of the final exam of last semester,and then classify the underachievers into three groups-underachievers with intelligence problems,underachievers without intelligence problems and underachievers with external problems.Firstly we investigate their learning strategies based on the standard of English curriculum to find out the learning strategies they use now.Next we train the three groups of underachievers' learning strategies in different methods and different time duration,i.e.respectively for half a year and one year with concentrating training,five- step training and affect training methods.Chapter Fourth analyzes the result of the experiment.Our experiment shows that strategy training does have effect on underachievers' study.The training effect depends quite a lot on the training time to different degrees.1).The three different training methods(concentrating training,five-step training and affect training methods)have got different training effects:Concentrating training has greatly improved the cognitive strategies of underachievers with intelligence problems,such as memory strategy.The improvement help the students enlarge their vocabulary more efficiently,which provides the students with a strong support for their grades.Five-step training improves the metalcognitive strategies of underachievers without intelligence problems,thus enhances their abilities in managing their learning,such as the ability of planning and reflection, helps the students to get half the result with twice the effort.Affection training methods improve the affection and communication strategy of the underachievers with external problems,which leads to their interest in English increasingvery quickly,at the same time, the students has developed the great sprit of teamwork.2)In a whole,the results of short-time or long-time training for different problem students have different effect:for underachievers with intelligence problems and underachievers without intelligence problems,long-time training can achieve better results.After one year's training,their English grades have improved very quickly,85%of the underachievers have passed their exams,among them,underachievers without intelligence problems have make more remarkable progress than the others,But for underachievers with external problems,the result of short-time training is better,They have now taken a positive attitude toward their learning,and they are becoming more and more active in class,thus advancing by leaps and bounds in their English grades.According to the result,this paper gives different suggestions to the three groups of underachievers.Chapter Five draws to conclusion,pointing out the merits and limitations of the present study and making some suggestions for the future research as well.Our study finds:1).Training with the three methods all can improve the students' English learning strategies and achievements in learning English.But the three training methods,each has their emphasis.The best way is to make a combination of the three in one,and take advantage of each method.2).Teachers can take different methods to different underachievers.3)The training and development of students' English learning strategies need a long time and continuous work.This research has just got an initial experiment achievement.There must be many problems to be discussed and solved.We also make some suggestions for further study.