An Investigation Of English Learning Strategies Of Normal College Students

In recent decades, the focus on foreign language teaching has been turned from the study of teaching methods to the research on the learning characteristics of learners and their influences on learning process. And more and more attention is being paid to the learning strategies in language learning.As normal colleges are important institutions where qualified English teachers are being cultivated, it is of great significance to investigate the existing problems in the students’use of language learning strategies and probe their solutions. It can help improve the teaching quality of future English teachers, and in turn, promote the development of foreign language teaching in our country.This study, by means of a questionnaire survey with Oxford’s Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (Chinese version), investigates the application of English learning strategies of 165 non-English majors of 2013 in Hunan College for Preschool Education. Meanwhile, interviews have been given to 9 good English learners. It is aimed to solve the following three research questions:(1) What is the present situation for normal college students to use language learning strategies? (2) What is the correlation between students’use of language learning strategies and their Pretco-A scores? (3) What charateristics do high score achievers have in their use of English learning strategies?Through the investigation and study, the following conclusions have been reached:(1) Compared with students from undergraduate colleges and vocational colleges, normal college students do not use English learning strategies so often. Among the six English learning strategies, compensation strategies are used most frequently while memory strategies are used least frequently. (2) There exists comparatively strong correlation between students’ Pretco-A scores and their use of language learning strategies. It is found out that there exists positive correlation between the students’ overall use of English learning strategies and their Pretco-A scores, which indicates that the more frequently a college student uses language strategies, the higher Pretco-A score he or she will get. (3)There is a significant difference in the use of language learning strategies between the high Pretco-A score achievers and the low score achievers and the high Pretco-A score achievers use language learning strategies more frequently than the low score achievers. Throuth interviews, the common characteristics of the high score achievers are discovered as follows: firstly, they like English language and have strong motivations for learning English; secondly, they have clear objetives for learning English; thirdly, they attach great importance to memorizing English words and phrases in their English learning; lastly, they spend a great deal of time practicing English language skills such as listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating.Through in-depth interviews as well as questionnaires, the author of this paper has managed to know the present situation of the application of English learning strategies by normal college students. With the investigation and study we have made about it, we hope to supply some valuable reference for the improvement of both English learning efficiency and teaching quality in normal colleges.