A Study On EFL Learners’ Learning Strategies And Interaction Patterns In A Microblogging Environment

Nowadays, micro blog has integrated into every field of our life. People like to send messages on micro blog anywhere and anytime, which has a significant impact on English learning. The present study aims to examine the following research questions:(1)What attitudes do EFL learners hold towards using micro-blog to learn English?(2)What is general tendency of using learning strategies among the EFL learners in the microblogging environment?(3) What are the interaction patterns of participants in the microblogging environment and its relationship with the use of learning strategies?Using the questionnaire and social network analysis as research instruments and adopting qualitative and quantitative methods, the present study surveyed the EFL learners‘ attitude of using micro blog to learn English in a college in Lanzhou; based on the Oxford‘s(1990) classification of language learning strategy, the present study explores the general tendency of learners‘ use of learning strategy; by analyzing 6,499 posted message in micro blog during 84 days, the paper studied the interaction pattern of members in the micro blog community and its relationship with use of language learning strategy. The results of the study are as following:1.Most students have the willingness of and are interested in learning English by micro-blog. The overwhelming majority of students have the experience of using micro-blog; nearly half of college students think that they can get useful information and knowledge on micro-blog and they republish and collect the useful English knowledge when they see the knowledge on micro-blog; certain college students would write down the useful knowledge on their notebook in order to look over and memorize them later.2.There exists the deficiency of learning strategies in the microblogging learning environment and EFL learners in microblogging environment do not use learning strategy very often. Compensation strategy is the most frequently used by the learners in microblogging environment, followed by affective strategy and social strategy. Female learners use language learning strategy more frequently than male learners. During the process of learning by micro blog, lower-level learner adopted affective learning strategy most. The factors that affect the strategy use of learners include learners‘ gender, proficiency, interest and confidence.3.The interaction pattern of microblogging environment belongs to network structure. This structure is very suitable and beneficial to construct and to gain knowledge. Every student has strong desire to talk with teacher; the flow of information was vertical. Learners narrowed their interactive partner to some certain people over time. Although the micro blog is an open up platform, members in this community tend to communicate with the person that they know in the real life or physical world. The more active the learner is, the more frequently he or she uses the language learning strategy.The significance of study lies in offering hints to teachers who will make use of micro blog to teach language. Educators can make use of multi-function of micro blog to offer diversified learning resources to learners, guide learners to arouse all kinds of sense organ and use as many learning strategy as possible to achieve the optimal effect of language learning. Besides, it can give teachers some enlightenment about manage specific learning content on micro blog and effectively interact with students.