A Survey And Analysis Of English Learning Strategies Used By Senior One Students

Learning strategy plays a key role in language learning. Appropriate use oflearning strategies could improve learners’ proficiency and raise theirself-confidence. Among innumerous researches on language learning strategies athome and abroad, most of them focus on the English learning strategies used bycollege students while few systematic investigations are concerned with middleschool students, especially the Senior One students. What’s more, Senior One is amajor transitional period from Junior Middle school to Senior Middle school. Toknow about how these Senior One students make use of learning strategies willprovide the teachers with pedagogical foundations and implications. The newEnglish curricular also puts great emphasis on the need to cultivate students’ abilityof using English learning strategies, which will lay a solid foundation for theirlifelong English learning.Based on the above reasons, in this thesis,320Senior One students in LuoyangCity are chosen as the subjects. The author tries to investigate the status quo ofEnglish learning strategies used by Senior One students and the factors influencingthe learning strategies use; the strategic differences between high-achievers andlow-achievers, the relationship between the achievements and the frequency oflearning strategies use; to explore the predicting effects of English learningstrategies on the achievements as well as the extent. The questionnaire of the surveyis made according to Oxford’s SILL questionnaire and the present situation ofChinese students, which is of relatively high validity. The data are analyzed with thehelp of Social Scientific Statistic software SPSS and the Excel software. Theresearches are conducted by the analysis of variance and regression analysis and etc.Through the investigation and analysis, the major findings are listed below:(1) The Senior One students selected from the two Senior Middle schools inLuoyang City employ the English learning strategies at a medium level. In the lightof the frequency, the six types of Senior One students’ strategies in learning Englishdevelop unevenly. The frequency sequence from high to low is as follows:compensation strategies, metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies, affectivestrategies, social strategies and memory strategies. Then the influencing factors areanalyzed one by one.(2) There are significant differences not only in using the overall English learning strategies but also the special category strategies between high-achieversand low-achievers. The higher the achievement is, the more frequently the learningstrategies are used.（3）Learning strategies can play a certain role in predicting the Englishachievements, but do not have direct relationship with the strategy using frequency.Especially speaking, the cognitive strategies and the affective strategies’ predictingeffect are significant, which are10.6％and1.1％respectively. While as for thelearning strategies, there is no direct proportion between their frequency andpredicting effects.Finally, based on the results, some feasible suggestions are put forward forEnglish teachers and students. For example, the English teachers and students shouldraise their awareness of learning strategies; English teachers are supposed to helpstudents to cultivate positive attitude toward English learning and strengthen thetraining on students’ learning strategies use in teaching.