A Study Of College Students' Out-of-class English Learning Strategies

As we know, for most college students, the amount of the total English class is just 288 periods. Even for English majors, the amount of the English class is about 12 hours per week. It is very difficult to learn English effectively in so limited time, because English learning is a kind of arduous work and time-consuming. Accordingly, for college students, their English learning is mainly out-of-class learning. But influenced by traditional teaching and learning, most college students can't arrange their out-of-class learning effectively. Their learning is in disorder, and they just learn blindly according to their interests or are forced to learn by pressure. As a result, their learning is at will and loose and lacks systematic plan. Especially for freshmen and the second year students, in their own words, they often spent the first two years not knowing what one is about. In the light of this situation, the author has analyzed the underlying reasons and found out that the lack of learning strategies is one of the main factors, which hinder the promotion of the efficiency of the college students' out-of-class learning. In order to change this backward situation and provide some solution for these problems and promote autonomy learning and finally improve the learning efficiency of college students' learning, the author does some theoretical research on some aspects of learning strategies, such as definition, classification, strategy training and its validity; then the author investigates 160 college students' learning forms and learning strategy use of their out-of-class learning by using a questionnaire and individual interviews. Through the investigation research, the author finds out that (1) the college students' mean scores of learning forms related to reading, listening and doing vocabulary and grammar exercises are higher than those of other learning forms related to speaking and writing. According to this, we can see that the college students are habitual to take passive learning forms. Through individual interviews, we find out some external factors that affect their choices of learning forms, such as facilities, technical support and learning atmosphere. (2) Participants generally employ a variety of learning strategies to study English. Amongthe three categories, cognitive strategies are employed more frequently than the other two categories. We find out that there are some differences between successful learners and less successful learners. On average, the successful learners use more learning strategies more frequently than less successful learners. Thus, according to investigation results, we can conclude that learning strategies are very important for college students' learning. Finally, in order to improve the college students' learning strategy level, the author provides a suggested framework for strategy training based on the results of this investigation.