An Investigation On The Relationship Between English Learning Strategies And The Performance On PRETCO-Level A

In recent years, language learning strategies has become something of a "buzz" word in foreign language teaching and research field. LLSs (language learning strategies) are specific behaviors, steps, or techniques that students often intentionally use to improve their progress in developing L2 skills (Oxford, 1993). These strategies can facilitate the acquisition, storage, retrieval, or utilization of new information. The employment of language learning strategies, to the large extent, may have effect on scores of students. Language learning strategies are extremely important and helpful to each learner in the process of language learning, which can enable students to take responsibility for their own learning by enhancing learners autonomy, independence, self-direction, raising the students' consciousness of learning, releasing their learning pressure and increasing their learning efficiency. Therefore, the training of learning strategies is one part of quality education and life-long education.However, the higher polytechnic education in our country has been quick in developing in recent years. The higher polytechnic education is quite different from any of the higher education in China, which undertakes the task of training qualified and applied technical workers to satisfy the needs of industries and enterprises. They play an active role in our socialist economic construction. Moreover, the students in the higher polytechnic college have their own characteristics completely different from those in the common universities and high schools in the learning process. Most of the students are from the countryside, their entrance requirements are much lower than the common college students, especially in Gansu province, and there are thin chances for them to get a desired job after graduation, therefore they have relatively weak learning motivation and different learning goals, lack of sufficient knowledge that they should have obtained in secondary or elementary school, and have little confidence in themselves for the future, especially feel no interest in learning the foreign language. In addition, up to now the special group is often neglected by the common researchers, there have been few studies on their learning, so it is necessary to make a survey on the levels of English learning strategies used by the higher polytechnic college students and their overall characteristics in using learning strategies. This can contribute to know the current situation about their learning strategies use and will offer the help for the future English teaching.This paper employed a questionnaire to investigate the overall use of English learning strategies of 224 non-English majors in the higher polytechnic college, and examined the relationship between strategy use and language performance on PRETCO-Level A (Practical English Test for Colleges). The results show that the students in the higher polytechnic college used memory and compensation strategies most frequently; used social and affective strategies the least frequently, there were close relationship betweenthe LLSs and the performance on PRETCO-Level A and the students with high English proficiency employed all the strategies more frequently than those with low English proficiency did. Meanwhile it is suggested that a strategy training approach could be useful for both students and teachers. And teachers can help their students learn quicker, easier, and more effective by weaving learning strategy training into regular classrooms.The thesis consists of seven chapters:Chapter 1 introduces the significance and purposes of the present study. It provides current situation and importance of learning strategies use in the learners' learning process.Chapter 2 is literature review, which mainly reviews the results of the studies on language learning strategies and the research on the relationship between uses of LLSs and scores of SFL, which made in such a field previously by experts and scholars abroad and in China.Chapter 3 is theoretical framework. It mainly provides the theoretical background for the study by elaborating the definition and classification of language learning strategies, and also explains the difference between learning skills and learning strategies.Chapter 4 is research design, which describes the hypothesis of the present study, the research subjects, instruments and procedures and data collection. The subjects in this study are 224 second-yea r non-English major students from two higher polytechnic colleges in Gansu province. There are two instruments involved in this study, (a) An English level test We adopt a national Standard English level test - the paper of Practical English Test for Colleges-Level A. (b) A questionnaire survey on "English learning strategies". The SILL questionnaire (Strategy Inventory for Language Learning) by Oxford (1990,) was used. The SILL consists of six categories of strategies: memory, cognitive, compensation, meta-cognitive, affective, and social. Some items of SILL are changed according to the different language characteristics and the real circumstances in the higher polytechnic colleges.Chapter 5 is a vital part in the thesis, which makes the description about the research results in detail. SPSS (10.0) is used to process the raw data.Chapter 6 analyzes and discusses about the research results further. Chapter 7 draws the conclusion and gives some implications.