Study On Classification Of English Majors' Learning Strategies Of Spoken English

In recent years,with a great demand of proficient spoken English in China,researchers have shifted their focus from how teachers teach spoken English to how learners learn it.The result of such a shift is that spoken English learning strategies has been widely studied.It is well documented that a systematic model of spoken English learning strategies not only help researchers scientifically conduct their research but also provide rich implications for teachers to guide their students to systematically employ efficient and suitable strategies.However,in the professional studies of spoken English learning strategies,there is a lack of rigid and scientific classification of spoken English learning strategies.It is,therefore,necessary to study the classification of spoken English learning strategies.To fill in this research gap,this research aims to find out what frequently used spoken English learning strategies by English majors are and how many categories they can be divided into.To achieve these two purposes,the quantitative method was adopted with questionnaires distributed among 402 English majors from four universities in Tianjin.The sample covered English majors at three levels:junior students,senior students and graduate students.The data collection lasted from May 27 to July 10 of 2015.Descriptive analysis and exploratory factor analysis were used with the help of SPSS 13.0 to analyze the collected data.The results indicate that there are only nine strategies used frequently by English majors in their spoken English learning.With the exploratory factor analysis,the nine strategies were reduced to two categories,namely,two-factor model of spoken English learning strategies.While,when classified according to Oxford's model of language learning strategies,the nine strategies were grouped into three different categories.By comparing the result of this study with Oxford's classification of language learning strategies,it can be clearly seen that Oxford's classification of language learning strategies could not be completely adopted to classifying the classification of spoken English learning strategies.Based on the result of the study,it is suggested that teachers should make a great effort to guide their students to choose suitable and effective spoken English learning strategies.Besides,it is also recommended that learners should understand spoken learning strategies and use them in a conscious way.