A Study On Learning Strategy Use Of Bilinguals And Monolinguals In English Learning

Under the influence of globalization of economy, English, as one of the most importanttool for communication, is playing an ever-increasingly significant role. More and morepeople learn English as their second or third language. In the Chinese context, English islearned as a third language in some minority language communities where bilingualphenomenon commonly exists. The languages of bilingualism refer to the ethnic minoritylanguage and Chinese. So far, a great number of linguists have made a detailed overviewabout language learning strategies in different linguistic areas both at home and aboard.However, this paper is conducted to examine the difference between bilinguals andmonolinguals in terms of language learning strategy use and find out the effective strategy usein the two groups by analyzing the their strategy use and their learning proficiency.The study in this dissertation is based on the learning strategy use of66third-yearmiddle school students in Fushun No.1Korean Middle School in Liaoning Province.34students of them are bilinguals who can speak Chinese and Korean. The other32students canonly speak Chinese. All the participants of the study learn English as the compulsory subject.The study was carried out with the purpose of finding out strategy use of BSs (bilingualstudents) and MSs (monolingual students) in English learning. The research questions coversfollowing aspects:1) What are the learning strategies used by bilingual students?2) What arethe learning strategies used by monolingual students?3) What are the effective strategies usedby monolingual students and bilingual students?The students’ use of strategies was quantitatively surveyed with a questionnaire whichmainly based on Oxford’s (1990) Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL), includingsix categories of strategy, namely, memory, metacognitive, cognitive, compensation, affectiveand social strategies. The SPSS14.0is used to analyze the data. In addition, the presentresearcher analyzed the effective strategies used by MSs and BSs.According to the results of analysis, there was no significant difference of the overall useof strategies by bilingual and monolingual students.1. BSs used different strategies in Englishlearning with the highest frequency use of metacognitvie strategies and lowest frequency ofmemory strategies. According to the ten strategy items most frequently used by BSs, fourstrategies are related to the spoken English. It can be seen that they attach more importance tothe use of language possibly due to more language learning experience.2. The most frequently used strategies were compensation strategies, cognitive strategies. Theyinappropriately and least frequently use affective strategies in English learning.3. Aftercarefully examining the strategy use of the two groups, it can be seen that the bilingualstudents who more frequently employ metacognitive and affective strategies are highlyproficient in English level. For MSs, memory strategies and cognitive categories have positiveinteraction with English performance.The findings of the research may offer English teachers some useful suggestions: nowthat effective learning strategy use can promote their English performance, teachers may needto teach and train students how to use strategies appropriately and to strengthen the awarenessof metacognitive and affective strategy use in order to develop learning autonomy. Moreover,students in ethnic minority regions should be encouraged to maintain their minority languages,and be more aware of the advantages of bilingual ability in learning English.