| Homework is generally considered as an extension and supplement to classroom teaching while language learning strategies are widely acknowledged as one of the determinant factors of learning achievements. Numerous researchers and scholars have devoted themselves to studying homework or language learning strategies, but few have combined the two research aspects together, leaving English homework strategies a virgin area.In order to fill up this gap, this paper is undertaken to investigate the status quo of English homework strategies of Junior Middle School students through questionnaires and interview. The research questions addressed in this thesis are:1) What are the general patterns of English homework strategies employed by Junior Middle School students?2) Are there any differences in the use of English homework strategies between low achievers and high achievers? If yes, what are the differences?3) What is the relationship between English homework strategies and students’ English proficiency?Both quantitative and qualitative methods are adopted in the study. The quantitative research mainly involves a self-designed questionnaire with the whole internal reliability reaching.843. The questionnaires are handed out to207Junior One students from Yangzhou Shu Ren Middle School on October13th,2011and finally168are found valid. Then, the data is processed by SPSS17.0. The qualitative research is a semi-structured interview with10students being selected from those whose questionnaires are considered valid. The interview is carried out in Chinese and the whole process is tape-recorded. Afterwards, the results are transcribed into English and the transcriptions of the interview are carefully analyzed.Detailed analysis of both quantitative and qualitative research yields the following findings.Firstly, Junior Middle School students report a relatively high frequency in adopting all the English homework strategies, with metacognitive homework strategies coming the first, followed by cognitive homework strategies and social/affective homework strategies which is the least frequently used homework strategies. Besides, Advance Organization1and Self-management are perceived to be the most favored metacognitive homework strategies; Inference and Substitution are the most preferred cognitive homework strategies; Lowering Anxiety2and Asking for Clarification1are the most frequently adopted social/affective homework strategies.Secondly, high achievers adopt all the three broad homework strategies more frequently than low achievers and the differences in metacognitive and cognitive categories are significant (p=.000). In the metacognitive category, except for the homework strategies of Advance Organization1and Self-management, high and low achievers show great differences in all the other specific homework strategies (p<.05). Among the11micro-cognitive homework strategies, high achievers report adopting eight homework strategies(Repeating, Recognizing Formulas and Patterns, Substitution, Getting the Idea Quickly, Analyzing Sentences, Highlighting, Summarizing and Inference) much more frequently than low achievers (p<.05). In the social/affective category, there is no significant difference between the two groups in general (p=.631>.05), but the difference is significant in the micro-homework strategies of Lowering Anxiety2, Making Positive Statements, Rewarding, Asking for Clarification2and Developing Cultural Understanding.Thirdly, metacognitive and cognitive strategies are positively correlated with students’ English proficiency at the0.01level, whereas there is no significant correlation between social/affective strategy and students’English proficiency. Besides, when it comes to each micro-strategy, all the specific homework strategies under the metacognitive and cognitive categories are positively related to students’ English proficiency while some homework strategies under the social/affective category(Rewarding, Discussing Feelings with Others and Asking for Clarification2) are negatively related.In light of the findings, this paper makes some pedagogical implications both for teachers and students. For teachers, they should take measures to inspire students’homework strategy awareness, guide students to use some specific homework strategies and pay more attention to the low achievers in the homework strategy instruction. For students, they must improve the awareness of strategy use and try to make an extensive use of homework strategies. |
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