Chinese English Learners' Achievement Strategies

The effect of English proficiency and communication tasks upon English learners' use of communication strategies has been evidenced by many researches. And to improve the English learners' use of communication strategies has become an urgent need in improving their communication, communicative competence and second language learning. Owing to the important role of achievement strategies in communication strategies, the study on the effect of English proficiency and communicative tasks upon learners' use of achievement strategies has become a research focus.Accordingly, this thesis reports a study conducted in an attempt to find out whether the English proficiency and the imageability of passage content affect Chinese EFL learners' choice of achievement strategies.20 sophomores of a non-English major participated in the study, and they were divided into two groups: higher-proficiency group and lower-proficiency group. The study employed the task of passage retelling, and the subjects were required to retell passages with different degrees (Low vs. High) of imageability of content. The subjects' oral production was recorded and transcribed, and the information of the subjects' strategy use frequency was got from the transcription. Then three 2 (Imageability: High vs. Low)×2 (Proficiency: High vs. Low) analyses of variance were conducted on the frequencies of the subjects' use of L1-based strategies, interlanguage-based achievement strategies, and the cooperative strategies respectively.The results showed that the English proficiency, the imageability of passage content, and the interaction of the two factors all significantly affected Chinese EFL learners' choice of achievement strategies. The main findings were that the achievement strategies were used more frequently by the successful EFL learners than by the less successful ones. The less successful EFL learners used achievement strategies more frequently in retelling concrete passages whereas the successful EFL learners used achievement strategies more frequently in retelling abstract passages.The findings of the study have clear pedagogical implications for teaching of achievement strategies. They suggest that the teachers should choose materials with appropriate degrees of imageability of content for students of different proficiency levels and encourage them to consciously use more interlanguage strategies.