The Impact Of Strategy-input And Learning Style Differences On Learner's Oral English Performance With The Microgentic Method

Theories about individual learner differences which related to the field of second language acquisition show that both learning strategies and learners' learning styles can affect their language achievements. Observations towards long-term teaching practice at home and abroad and numerous empirical researches have confirmed this assertion. In recent decades, experts, scholars as well as teachers in schools also launched a large number of empirical studies toward individual learner differences combined with the actual teaching conditions under the framework of second language theories, and all of these research achievements have boosted the foreign language teaching in China to a large extent. However, researches on differences in learners' learning style and the use of learning strategies from microscopic perspective can rarely be seen. Currently, there are few researches on the relationship between the strategic training and English learning effects by using the microgenetic method in China, especially those on relationship between strategic training and oral English learning. Therefore, this thesis intends to use the microgenetic method, with intent to investigate learners' oral English performance under the influence of learners' learning styles and learning strategies-input from the views of cognitive and metacognitive strategies.The so-called microgenetic method is characterized by three essential properties: a sufficiently long observation span, a high density of observations and an intensive analysis of the observation data(Wen Qiufang, 2003). Microgenetic analysis is a kind of research method which rises in recent 20 years in the field of cognitive psychology. This method is mainly used to explore trajectory and mechanism of cognitive development, focusing on the group or individual's variability during development process. This thesis discussed the effects of learning strategies-input on learners' oral performance in terms of fluency, accuracy and complexity, and the effects of the different strategies-input on learners' strategy use through empirical studies.The present research is an experimental one, by which the thesis intends to answer the following 4 questions: 1) whether there are learning-style preferences in English learners(45 participants); 2) whether the learning strategies-input contribute to the subjects' oral production achievements in terms of fluency, accuracy and complexity; 3) which of the learning strategies-input(cognitive or metacognitive strategies) is more effective in improving subjects' oral production; 4) whether the same strategy-input have the same effect on strategy use for subjects with different learning-style preferences. Before the experiment, the author chose 45 non-English majors in second grade from Lanzhou Jiaotong University, and let them finish a Perceptual Learning Style Preference questionnaire, and the results of which shows that they belong to different learning styles. Besides, according to the highest score of their major preference towards learning styles and participants' CET-4 scores, the author chose 3 students as the subjects with the purpose of observing the changes of their oral performance by conducting the relevant speaking tasks. During the process of this experiment, the 3 subjects were asked to finish the same oral tasks for three times within 2 weeks respectively. They were required to finish the first test under the prerequisite that the subjects haven't received any input of learning strategies and any training; After finishing the first and the second speaking tasks, they three received inputting of cognitive and metacognitive strategies respectively, and were asking to fill in the Speaking Strategies Checklists. Then, their oral testing process was recorded by a video recorder. At the end of this experiment, the video-taped performance of the three subjects has been transformed according to the research purpose, and their language development and changes from under the framework of fluency, accuracy and complexity. Finally, statistical software SPSS19.0 was used to make paired samples T-tests, by which the following results are obtained:1) 45 participants differiate in learning style preferences and the major learning styles of the participants are tactile(mean = 39.12) the group style(mean = 33.1) are the minor leaning styles preferred by subjects; 2) Learning strategies-input can make contribution to the subjects' oral performance of fluency, accuracy and complexity; 3) Through the comparison of their performance of oral English, we can see that the input of metacognitive strategies(t equals to 9.42;5.21;5.26 for fluency, accuracy and syntactic complexity respectively;p is smaller than 0.05 for all)are more effective to the progress in their oral English compared to cognitive strategies-input; 4) For learners with different learning style preferences, the same strategies-input causes different results on subjects' strategy use.This study provides new ideas and new methods for language research of oral production, and the research findings are useful in promoting the practice of college oral English teaching as well.