Research On The Relationship Between Learning Strategies And Language Performance Of College Students

Since the teaching methods are changed from the teacher-centered to the student-centered, learning strategy has gradually become the focus of foreign language teaching. Therefore, the domestic and foreign scholars conducted a lot of researches and made great progress. After the latest reform of college English Test Band 4 and Band 6 in 2013, university students are set the higher requirements of English learning. Due to the fact that the learning strategy is closely related to language performance, it is significant for university students to use the English learning strategies.As the cognitive research field has gradually been expanded in mid-1970s, more and more scholars began to reform the foreign language teaching. The integration of information processing and the addition of systematical data analysis make the learning strategy research more scientific and theoretical. Because of different research instruments and complexity of learning strategies, the definition and the classification of learning strategies are under the dispute. As the representatives of learning strategy researches, Rubin and Stern are the first researchers to introduce their tentative conceptions of strategies used by "good language learners". Since 1980s, the majority of scholars began to apply new methodologies, such as O’Malley, Oxford and Purpura. According to McLaughlin’s information processing model and Anderson’s declarative and procedural knowledge model, they studied the nature and classification of learning strategies reasonably and systematically, in order to improve learners’ competence of listening, speaking, reading and writing. The researches on the relationship between learning strategies and language performance have the positive effects on improving teachers’ teaching and increasing students’learning.The thesis is mainly based on O’Malley’s, Oxford’s and Purpura’s classification of learning strategies, and uses Purpura’s questionnaire and college English test band 4 as the research instruments. The purpose of this thesis is to have some positive effects on improving the learning methods, fostering the independent learning ability and enhancing the learning efficiency of students. The author adopted the quantitive data analysis and conducted the questionnaire with the 119 non-English majors (60 students in 2012 grade and 59 students in 2010 grade) in Northeast Forestry University. The results are presented with the data analysis by SPSS 19.0 as follows. First, the majority of non-English major university students use the learning strategies at present, among which metacognitive strategy is used more frequently than cognitive strategy. There are some relationships between cognitive strategy and metacognitive strategy. Second, the results of regression analysis show that learners’strategies use have the significant influence on their language performance, but not every strategy takes effect on it. The thesis employed the latest reform of CET-4 scores in December,2013 as the only dependent variable. Self-testing variable in metacognitive strategies and practicing naturalistically variable in cognitive strategies have the best predicative on language performance. In the end, the research major findings, the implications for teacher’s teaching and students’ learning are concluded in this thesis. Due to the limitations and shortcomings of this study, the author wishes the further researches will be improved and explored more comprehensively.