A Study Of Senior High Students’ Learning Strategies Under New English Curriculum Standard

Along with the transition of education modes from exam-oriented education to quality-oriented education, the principal role of learners is increasingly momentous in English teaching and learning nowadays. The national ministry of education in our country promulgated the Normal Senior English Curriculum Standard (short for the new English curriculum standard) in2003. One of the main objectives of the new English curriculum standard for senior middle schools is the cultivation and development of senior high students’ learning strategies.In the new curriculum standard, learning strategies refer to all the measures, actions and beliefs that senior high students adopt in the learning process in order to utilize English efficiently. The new curriculum standard points but that the proficient application of learning strategies is not only beneficial for the improvement of senior high students’ learning efficiency, but also advantageous for the cultivation of their autonomous learning abilities that will have significance in laying a solid foundation for students’ lifelong sustainable learning abilities.Since the1970s, scholars abroad and at home have carried out a large number of researches on language learning strategies, such as J. Rubin (1975), N. Naiman (1978), Cohen&Chamot (1987), Oxford (1990), Carol Griffiths (2003), Wen Qiufang (1996), Qin Xiaoqing (1998), Cheng Xiaotang (2002), etc. Their research results all demonstrate that learning strategies play a crucial role in the learning process and the effective adoption of learning strategies is instructive to language achievement. As most of the above researchers take college students as their experimental subjects, there are not many relative studies on the strategy utilization of senior middle school students and few of them take the new curriculum standard as their research background.The research subjects of the present study are senior high students from two parallel classes in the second grade in Yanbian No.4Senior Middle School, Jilin Province. This thesis adopts literature analysis, questionnaire investigation and interview as its main research methods. In light of the classification of learning strategies in the new curriculum standard, Oxford’s Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) and Wen Qiufang’s English learning strategy questionnaire, the author develops an English learning strategy questionnaire that is suitable for senior high students. The author applies SPSS18.0for the statistical analysis of the questionnaire survey data.The research results present the following conclusions.1) It is generally not high for the overall and specific strategy application of senior high school students.2) Significant distinctions are showed between male and female students in the application of learning strategies.3) Science and liberal art students are positively different in the utilization of learning strategies.4) There are significant differences between the high-score and low-score groups in adopting learning strategies. Compared with the low-achievement students, the high-achievement ones apply learning strategies much more frequently and proficiently in utilizing diverse learning strategies.5) The application of affective strategies has the most significant correlation with language achievements of senior high school students.The addition of affective strategies in the present research is on the basis of learning strategy classification in the new curriculum standard. This paper conducts the research on the learning strategies of senior high students from five aspects, which include cognitive, metacognitive, communicative, resource and affective strategies. Affective strategies are the important component of senior high students’ learning strategies and the special concern of which meets the requirements for affective attitudes in the new curriculum standard.To sum up, this paper is a study of senior high students’ learning strategies with a background of the new English curriculum standard that is on the foundation of previous research theories and results. The research aims to reveal the application of senior high students’ English learning strategies and their influences on students’ English achievements. The significance of the present study lies in that the research implications will be beneficial for the improvement of senior high students’ autonomous learning abilities and profitable for the future relative researches and English classroom teaching.