A Study On English Grammar Learning Strategies Of Vocational College Students Majoring In Music

As further studies have been and will be done comprehensively on foreign language learning theories, researchers at home and abroad are gradually aware of the significance of learners, learning process and autonomous learning in learning foreign languages, inspiring them to shift their research focus from teacher-centeredness to student-centeredness, from traditional teaching to helping learners how to learn. Since1970s, a large number of western psychologists and linguists specialized in applied language have made fruitful achievement in studying foreign language learning strategies. In the1980s Chinese scholars took the initiative to do researches on learning strategies and made huge progress in this field. However, during these three decades, scholars at home have attached more importance to vocabulary learning strategies, reading learning strategies, writing learning strategies and listening learning strategies. Papers or illustrations on grammar learning strategies are thin on the ground. This paper is meant to richen researches on language learning strategies by focusing on grammar learning strategies.Communicative teaching approach took its upper hand in the past, which made grammar seriously neglected in English teaching and learning. But later on people realized the importance of the language accuracy, thus beginning to pay attention to grammar again. Grammar is an indispensable part of English learning and plays critical role in the pursuit of language accuracy. Foreign language learning is regarded as a very complex social and psychological process. The selection, organization and input of language data depend on using learning strategies, which makes learning strategies a key factor in foreign language learning to some extent. Learning is purposeful. In order to achieve the goal we should adopt certain learning strategies. As for certain tasks, strategies used can be right or wrong (appropriate or inappropriate). It is shown that learning results=50%learning strategies+40%efforts+10%IQ. Therefore, it is very important to instruct students to properly make use of grammar learning strategies while they are learning grammar.A few researches on grammar learning strategies have been done in China. In addition, participants of those researches are always English majors or students majoring in other subjects in university as well as students in high school. Breakthrough has not been made in choosing vocational college students majoring in music as subjects. With the instruments of questionnaire and interviews, based on previous studies, this paper is intended to explore the following questions:(1) overall use of grammar learning strategies;(2) differences in the use of the four categories of strategies in terms of grade, gender and English scores;(3) use of36specific grammar learning strategies, which specific strategies are frequently used or least used.Data from questionnaires are dealt with Microsoft Excel2003so as to obtain the mean and standard deviation. The results show that the overall use of grammar learning strategies by vocational college students majoring in music is at a low level. Affective, cognitive, social grammar learning strategies are employed at a medium level while metacognitive grammar learning strategy is used at a low degree. Affective grammar learning strategy is favored by students. In terms of four categories of grammar learning strategies, as for students in different grades, the higher grade they are in, the less frequently grammar learning strategies except metacognitive grammar learning strategies are used. Speaking of students of different gender in the same class, in general there is no distinctively different aspect in the use of grammar learning strategies. As far as students with different English scores are concerned, students who can gain high English scores are likely to use grammar learning strategies more frequently than students with low English scores. As for36specific grammar learning strategies, a conclusion is made that there are such strategies used in low level by vocational college students majoring in music students as self-management, self-evaluation, self-monitoring, taking notes strategy and communication and cooperation strategies.Therefore, for the sake of further improving English teaching and learning, proposals are put forward according to the actual usage of learning strategies for grammar in vocational college, helping students eliminate perplex troubles in grammar learning and improve grammar learning. Therefore, they are able to adapt themselves to the society.