A Study On The English Learning Strategy Instruction In Present Chinese Rural Junior Middle Schools

From the middle of the 1970s, foreign scholars like Rubin and Naiman began to study second language learning strategies, which made people realize that students are the real agents in learning. Therefore, the research focus of Foreign Language Teaching shifts from "how to teach" to "how to learn". In china, the New Curriculum Reform has put forward the idea of lifelong learning with the purpose of equipping students with the necessary self-learning abilities required by the new era. Under this kind of social background, this thesis bases itself on the relevant theories of language learning strategies as well as those of the New Curriculum Reform. From the perspective of teachers'English learning strategy instruction, this research chooses a normal rural middle junior school in Hunan Province as its researching subject and adopts depth interviews as well as questionnaires as its researching tools. In general, the purpose of this research is to get an overall understanding about the teachers'English learning strategy instruction in this rural junior middle school. And on the basis of the investigation data, this thesis will explore the ways to instruct students' English learning strategies, trying to provide some reference for rural English teachers'learning strategy instruction and to improve the students'English learning efficiency.The main research questions are:(1) How do the English teachers instruct English learning strategies at present? (2) Why do the English teachers instruct English learning strategies in the present way? (3) Is it effective for the English teachers to instruct English learning strategies in the present way? Centering on these research questions, this thesis has adopted the way of combining both qualitative and quantitative researches, that is to say, the author has not only interviewed the English teachers in this rural junior middle school in order to understand the general situation of these English teachers' strategy instruction, but also has handed out questionnaires to most of the students with the purpose of getting to know the overall situation of students'strategy use, which can offer a reference for exploring the effectiveness of the teachers'English learning strategy instruction.The major conclusions are:(1) Rural junior middle school English teachers have taught some English learning methods or strategies to their students, and they often teach their students some cognitive learning strategies. However, the teachers'English learning strategy instruction lacks systemacticness and careful planning. And as they don't have comprehensive theoretical knowledge concerning about English learning strategies, their consciousness of English learning strategy instruction is not so strong. (2) In the Chinese rural areas, the English teaching conditions are congenitally deficient in every aspect, and the rural middle school English teachers don't get enough in-service professional training, therefore, they cannot possibly have the required knowledge concerning about English learning strategies. Moreover, there exists an overwhelming trend of emphasizing students'enrollment to high middle schools and students'test scores in the present Chinese society, these English teachers have too much pressure of improving students' test scores, consequently, they don't have the time and energy to spare on English learning strategy instruction. (3) Students use English learning strategies at the medium rate, and meanwhile, the frequency of students'using adjusting learning strategies is a litter higher than that of the cognitive learning strategies. However, it is worthy to be mentioned that the students'overall situation of mastering cognitive learning strategies is much better than that of the adjusting learning strategies. To some extent, this kind of situation has provided a good explanation that the teachers'English learning strategy instruction, and especially their focus on cognitive learning strategies has produced positive effects on the students, that is, to have improved students'level of applying cognitive learning strategies. But for the applying of each specific language learning strategy, the students have shown great differences as well as disparities, and this is due to the lack of systemacticness and planning in strategy instruction.The main innovative points of this thesis lie in that this research has chosen teachers'English language learning strategy instruction in Chinese rural areas as the starting spot and through depth interviews as well as student questionnaires, this thesis has described the real situation of teachers'English strategy instruction, which has supplied a valuable reference for improving the English teaching efficiency in rural junior middle schools.