An Empirical Study Of The Correlationship Between English Learning Strategies And Students’ Personalities In Senior High Schools

The researchers in Western countries began to study language learning strategiesin the1970s of last century. The research on the factors that influence the use oflanguage learning attracts many researchers among all the researches. Those factorscan be divided into two categories: one is situational and social factors; the other isindividual learner differences. No doubt learners’ personalities play an important rolein their choice and use of language learning strategies. The researchers in Westerncountries have focused on the study of the relationship between learners’ personalitiesand learning language strategies for a long time, while in China there are a few studieson this research and most researchers take university students as their subjects. So it isnecessary for us to study the correlationship between English learning strategies andstudents’ personalities in senior high schools in China.In the present study,117senior high school students are taken as subjects. Twoquestionnaires are adopted as the instrument and they are Strategy Inventory forLanguage Learning (SILL) and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised(EPQ-R).All the data are analyzed through SPSS20.0and Excel2003. The studyfirstly discusses three types of students’ personality and their applicative rate ofEnglish learning strategies. Then the study focuses on whether there is correlationshipbetween students’ personalities and their applicative rate of English learning strategies.Finally the study discovers that the extrovert group and the introvert group havedifferent patterns in the use of language learning strategies. The study reveals that:1) The students participating in the research use English learning strategies at amedium level. They use compensation strategy and metacognitive strategy morefrequently than other strategies; memory strategy is the least frequently used by thestudents among all these six kinds of English learning strategies.2) There is a positive correlation between personality types and English learningstrategies.3) There is a difference in the use of English learning strategies between theextrovert group and the introvert group. To be more specific, the extrovert group use cognitive strategy, compensation strategy and social strategy more frequently than theintrovert group.Based on these results, some suggestions for English teachers in senior highschools are given.The teachers should strengthen English learning strategies of theirstudents according to their personalities.They should also encourage their students tounderstand their personalities and use different kinds of English learning strategies, sothey can improve their comprehensive communicative ability.