A Survey Of English Learning Strategies Used By Students With Learning Difficulties In Senior High School

The New English Curriculum for Chinese Primary Schools and Junior/Senior Middle Schools (2003) aims clearly at all-round development of students by providing them with opportunities of adopting good study habits and effective learning strategies. According to the purposes and requirements of the New English Curriculum for Chinese Primary Schools and Junior/Senior Middle Schools (2003), we ought to highly value on how to cultivate and train students’ abilities of applying English learning strategies. However, since the implementation of the curriculum, students’ application of English learning strategies in senior high school is not optimistic, especially the students with English learning difficulties.Through reviewing the researches of the recent decade, it is found that domestic scholars have been carrying out some studies of language learning strategies from different angles, most scholars intended to take college students or vocational college students as subjects but not senior high school students or students with English learning difficulties in senior high school. Furthermore, previous researches focused more on theoretical studies, lack of specific and empirical studies. Under the inspiration of predecessors, the present study investigates the application and the existing problems of English learning strategies used by the students with English learning difficulties from No.3 Senior High School in Lingui District, aiming at providing English teachers with a better understanding of the types and frequency of English learning strategies that are adopted by the students with English learning difficulties, and then to foster their students to become more autonomous and effective English learners.A questionnaire and semi-structured interview are used in the study. The basic instrument is designed for senior high school students by adapting the English leaning strategies questionnaire of Cheng Xiaotang and Zheng Min(2002). The quantitative data are analyzed with the aid of IBM SPSS Statistics version 20 (Statistic Package for Social Science) and the qualitative data are analyzed according to the four categories of English learning strategies of Cheng Xiaotang and Zheng Min (2002) under the frequency scale of Oxford(1990).Following are three main questions needed to be conferred in this research: (a) How frequently are English learning strategies employed by students with English learning difficulties in senior high school? (b) What are the differences in the application of English learning strategies between the top students and the students with English learning difficulties? (c) What are the main reasons for the current situation on the use of English learning strategies of the students with English learning difficulties? The study results indicate that:(a) The students with English learning difficulties generally do not use English learning strategies, (b) There exist evident differences between the top students and the students with English learning difficulties in the application of English learning strategies. The former can practice the learning strategies much better than the latter on the whole, and the significant differences of them in the use of learning strategies lie in the affective, communicative and metacognitive ones from T value test, (c) The three reasons, namely, the students’lack of understanding of English learning strategies, their negative attitude towards English learning and their teachers’ neglecting in instructing English learning strategies in class, primarily result in their current situation on the use of English learning strategies.