Effect Of Academic Major On MTCSOL Students’ Learning Strategies

This study investigates the differences of learning strategies applied byMTCSOL students from different academic majors in learning their specializedcourses.This thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter One is the introduction part, which describes the significance of thisstudy. The chapter begins with the description of the diversity of MTCSOL students’academic majors, then discusses the importance of the study on teacher’s learningexperience as a student.Chapter Two is the review of critical literature in this area. After the definition of“Learning Strategies”, this chapter reviews the progress of research on this issuefrom home and abroad.The review indicates that this study complies with the studytrend in foreign research that emphasizes the combination of”Learning strategies”and specialized courses, and will make up for the inadequacy of domestic research inthe learning strategies of high–level learners.Chapter Three describes the methodology of this study. By means of interviewswith14MTCSOL students and the arrangement of the transcripts, the authorinvestigates the research issues in Mokeachieetal’s theoretical framework, whichincluding three dimensions: cognitive strategies, meta-cognitive strategies andresource management strategies.Chapter Four is the discussion of research results. The first part is the overallassessment of MTCSOL students’ learning strategies, indicating that students fromdifferent academic majors all show relatively high skills of applying learningstrategies and convergent inclination in using specific strategies. The second part analyzes the differences among students from different majors. The differences incognitive strategies are manifested as selective attention strategy and the strategy oftaking notes. The former one can be attributed to the differences of majorcharacteristics and features and the latter one can be attributed to the differences ofknowledge foundation and teaching styles. The difference in meta-cognitive strategiesis the planning strategies, especially the planning of review before exams. But themajor is not the only influence factor, and the recognition of exams as well as theeffort they take in daily study also has influence on this strategy. The difference inresource management strategies is manifested as help-seeking strategies, to be exact,the frequency and the objects.This phenomenon is the result of differences ofknowledge foundation and experience of solving professional problems.Chapter Five summarizes the main results of research and offers somesuggestions for teaching and learning. The last part states the limitation of this studyand the expectation for further studies.