An Empirical Study Of Non-English Majors’Language Learning Strategy In Higher Vocational Colleges

How to learn English well? This has been a question that puzzles thousands of English teachers and learners. For a long time, researchers have paid much more attention to the study of language teachers. The research result of that has been thought of great significance in facilitating learners’language learning and also many teaching implications have been gotten from it. However, as the research focus of foreign language teaching has been changed from seeking the best teaching method to focusing on the internal factors of learners. Therefore, more and more researches have been carried out around the language learning strategy, and a great number of researches indicate that there is a close relationship between learners’strategy use and their language achievement. As a result, the study of language learning strategy is of great significance in both theory and practice for guiding the foreign language learners how to learn a foreign language.In fact, the previous studies on language learning strategies are far from being mature in China, and the majority of them have laid the focus on English majors or non-English majors in colleges and universities. Up to now, there has been a little research aiming at language learning strategies used by non-English majors of higher vocational colleges. According to statistics, the number of higher vocational college students has exceeded over50%of the total number of the college students in China. So it is necessary to pay more attention to the language learning strategy of this special group, which is also the objective of the present study.This study is based on the college English teaching of Shandong International Institute of Translation, directed by the theories of those distinguished researchers such as Oxford and Wen. The research is based on quantitative study which has been conducted in the form of interview and questionnaire. Statistic Package for the Social Sciences16.0is used to process the collecting data:1) descriptive statistics are used to demonstrate teachers and students’language learning strategy use;2) Independent Samples T-test is used to test the differences of English learning strategy used by high-level learners and low-level learners and the relationship between the use of language learning strategy and English proficiency;3) Pearson correlation is used to analyze the relevance of language learning strategy of teachers and students.The result shows that:1) The frequency of English learning strategy use of non-English majors in higher vocational college is of a low level; from freshman to sophomore, the students’awareness of using language learning strategy is gradually strengthened; the overall frequency of language learning strategy use presents a rising trend;2) There existed evident differences in the choice and use of English learning strategies between high-level learners and low-level learners; the former are more likely to use the following strategies such as compensation strategy and meta-cognitive strategy than the latter;3) There are explicit differences between teachers and students in the use of English learning strategy; the frequency of teachers’use of learning strategy is much higher than that of students’; as for the use of LLS between teachers and students, there is almost no relation.The present study provides several heuristic implications for the English teaching of higher vocational colleges:language teaching should not only include the teaching of language knowledge but also guiding the students how to use language learning strategies. In the process of language teaching, the teacher should teach students in accordance with their aptitudes, guide them to learn how to use the language learning strategies actively, help them set up scientific learning objectives according to their ability. Teachers should also try different ways to activate the students’interest in language learning. On the other hand, the higher vocational college students are supposed to strengthen their confidence, and to treat the language learning strategy with a scientific attitude. The students should put what they have learned into practice in order to seek the suitable learning method, and improve the ability of using the learning strategy as well as enhance English learning capability and level.