An Action Research Approach To The Learning Strategy Instruction In The English Village

With the research focus on second language acquisition shifting from "how to teach" to "how to learn", increasing attention has been paid to the essential role which the learner him/herself plays in the language learning process. Based on the learning autonomy, considerable investigation and instruction research on language learning strategies have been conducted and remarkable achievements have been made. Tianhe College of Guangdong Polytechnic Normal University, where the author has been working for six years, established an Intensive Oral English Training Camp (also called "English Village") in Zengcheng. The English Village initiated a short-term and intensive immersion program with a view to helping students improve their oral English. During the last five years, a large number of English majors have received oral English training in the Village. However, according to their feedback, most of them were not very satisfied with their progress over the course of the month-long training session. Through a preliminary investigation of the 29 subjects, the author found that the main cause lied in their language learning strategies. Thus he decided to conduct a research on the subjects. For the research purpose, the author raises the following three questions:1. Can Language Learning Strategy instruction help the subjects improve their oral English proficiency significantly within one month in the context of an English Village?2. Can Language Learning Strategy instruction improve subjects' frequency of strategy use in oral English learning?3. Is there any significant difference in the effect of Language Learning Strategy instruction between the poor learners, average learners and good learners? The second questionnaire provides quantitative data on the subjects' frequency of strategy use in the first training session in the areas of memory strategies, cognitive strategies, compensation strategies, meta-cognitive strategies, affective strategies and social strategies. Later, all the subjects took the oral English pre-test which was marked to represent their oral English level.Based on the subjects' frequency of the use of Language Learning Strategies and also two major oral English indicators, fluency and accuracy, a detailed action plan was designed and implemented. In the Village, the author provided a series of instructions for Language Learning Strategies in the form of lectures, seminars, group discussions and class integration which complied with Chamot and O'Malley's CALLA Model. In the implementation of the action plan, the author attempted to understand the subjects' strategy use and monitor any changes in their learning behaviors by means of field observations, random interviews and individual guidance. Occasionally, extra assistance and encouragement were offered. At the end of the training session, another questionnaire was administered on their strategy use after the Language Learning Strategy instruction and the oral English post-test was held.The research findings reflected a significant improvement in the subjects' oral English and an increase in their strategy use frequency. Among the subjects, the average learners made the most significant progress. Afterwards, the author reflected on the whole research process to find that there was still room for improvement in how to incorporate the Language Learning Strategy instruction better into classroom teaching in the next action cycle. A new training session will begin soon. It is hoped that this paper will be of some value to the reform of oral English teaching in the English Village both from a theoretical and practical points of view.