An Empirical Study On English Learning Strategies Of College English Poor Learners

At the beginning of1970s, a standstill of foreign language teaching methodologyresearch and the rapid development of cognitive psychology promoted the focus offoreign language teaching research turned from the study about how teachers “teach” tothe study about how students “learn”. Under this background, a world-wide study offoreign language learning strategies began from then on. In1984, a thesis named “Aninvestigation of learning strategies in oral communication that Chinese EFL learners inChina employ” was finished by Chinese scholar Huang Xiaohua in The ChineseUniversity of Hong Kong, it marked the study of English learning strategies started inChina. During the past30years, although numerous achievements have been got in thefield of learning strategies, there were few research achievements on the learningstrategies of college English poor learners. So, with the title of “An Empirical Study onLearning Strategies of College English Poor Learners”, the thesis chose602non-English major students in Shanxi University of Finance and Economics as subjects,and used questionnaire survey method and interview method to develop a series ofresearches. The Strategies Inventory for Language Learning (SILL), which wasdesigned by Rebecca Oxford (1990), was used as a research tool in the study. Firstly wecompared the similarities and differences on the using of learning strategies using levelof146English good learners and146English poor learners with the help of the SPSSstatistical software, and explored the relationship between English scores of collegeentrance examination and learning strategies. Then we investigated302English poorlearners’ strategies using level, and added with the interview results of30English poorlearners who were chosen at random, we found the influencing factors to the Englishlearning strategies using level of college English poor learners, and put forward foursuggestions finally. The research conclusions and suggestions were as follows:1. Good English learners’ strategies using level is much higher than poor learners’.A comparison results of strategies using level between English good learners andpoor learners showed that English good learners’ using level on memory strategies,cognitive strategies, meta-cognitive strategies, compensation strategies, affectivestrategies, social strategies and total strategies are all much higher than English goodlearners’, and the differences have the statistical significance.2. A significant correlation between English achievements and strategies can beshown. The test results on the correlation between English achievements of collegeentrance examination and English learning strategies showed that there are significantcorrelations between English achievements of college entrance examination andmemory strategies, cognitive strategies, meta-cognitive strategies, compensationstrategies, affective strategies, and social strategies. The degree of correlation betweenachievements and meta-cognitive strategies is the largest one among the six, and thecoefficient of correlation is0.806.3. College English poor learners’ learning strategies using level is in general.According to the results of the survey, the means of learning strategies for collegeEnglish poor learners is only2.67points, and according to Oxford’s explanation, thescore is in the framework of “general “, and tends to” usually don’t use”. The using levelof six strategies can be arranged from high to low like this: compensation strategies(2.90)�'social strategies (2.73)�'cognitive strategies (2.68)�'memory strategies(2.66)�'meta-cognitive strategies (2.60)�'affective strategies (2.51).4. College English Poor Learners’ learning strategies using range is wide.Although there is only one strategy that poor learners can often use in the50concrete strategies, scores of the other49strategies are all above1.4, it means there isno one strategy that they never used. So, it can be seen that for college English poorlearners although the using level is in general, the using range is wide.5. Teachers are the important factors affecting college English poor learners’strategies using level.From the results of investigations and interviews, we can see the reason causedcollege English poor learners lack of learning strategies consciousness is that someEnglish teachers are lack of strategies consciousness and the low using level of learningstrategies.6. The weakness on basic knowledge restricts college English poor learners’strategies using level.The results of interviews and investigations showed that the weakness of basicknowledge restricts college English poor learners’ use to some certain strategies, theresults provides a valuable reference for the future strategies training research and howto arrange the order of training contents.Based on the research conclusions, the thesis put forward the following foursuggestions to the English teaching reform in Shanxi University of Finance and Economics:1.To construct a new mode of college English teaching, which is based onstrategies training;2.To strengthen teachers’ and students’ strategies consciousness andimprove their strategies using level;3.To implement a different strategies training todifferent groups of college English poor learners;4. To construct an internal andexternal training model for the college English poor learners.