| Foreign language learning is a complicated process affected by many factors, among which one of the most important one is learning strategy. Learning strategy, which involves series of methods and behaviors adopted by students to improve language learning proficiency, plays a vital role in language learning. To English majors, reviewing is considered as an important process before TEM4 to improve their English proficiency and proper reviewing strategies can be conducive for students to achieve higher scores.Thus, this paper is undertaken to investigate the status quo of English major sophomores’ reviewing strategies through questionnaires and interviews. The research mainly involves three questions:1) What are the general patterns of reviewing strategies employed by English major sophomores when they prepare for TEM4? 2) Are there any differences in the use of reviewing strategies between high achievers and low achievers? If yes, what are the differences? 3) What is the relationship between English major sophomores’reviewing strategies and their TEM4 scores?Both quantitative and qualitative methods are adopted in this study. In the quantitative research, a questionnaire with the whole internal reliability reaching.901 is designed. The questionnaires are handed out to 131 English major juniors from Yangzhou University on October 8th,2015 and finally 104 are found valid. Then the data is processed by SPSS 17.0. The qualitative research is a semi-structured interview.10 students are selected from those whose questionnaires are considered valid to participate in the interview. The interview is carried out in Chinese and the whole process is tape-recorded. Afterwards, the results are transcribed into English and the transcriptions of the interview are carefully analyzed.The following findings are discovered through the analysis of quantitative and qualitative research.Firstly, English major sophomores use a wide variety of reviewing strategies and on the whole, they report a relatively high frequency of using all the reviewing strategies. Moreover, Direct Reviewing Strategies are a bit more frequently used than Indirect Reviewing Strategies. Within the broad category of Direct Reviewing Strategies, Compensation Reviewing Strategies ranks first. In the sub-category of Compensation Reviewing Strategies, the practice of "using another word with the similar meaning to replace an unfamiliar word in the writing exercise" is perceived to be the most frequently employed. Within the broad category of Indirect Reviewing Strategies, Affective Reviewing Strategies occupies the first place. In the sub-category of Affective Reviewing Strategies, the strategy of Taking emotional temperature is the most favored among English major sophomores.Secondly, there do exist some differences between high achievers and low achievers in the use of reviewing strategies. Generally speaking, high achievers adopt the two broad categories of reviewing strategies more frequently than low achievers. Within the broad category of Direct Reviewing Strategies, high achievers and low achievers show the difference in the two sub-categories of reviewing strategies, namely Memory Reviewing Strategies and Cognitive Reviewing Strategies. In contrast, the two groups do not show much difference in using Compensation Reviewing Strategies (p=.071>.05). In the memory category, high and low achievers show much difference in the three specific strategies (Creating mental linkage 1, Creating mental linkage 3 and Applying images and sounds 1). In the cognitive category, high achievers adopt two specific strategies (Receiving and Sending messages and Creating structures for input and output 1) more frequently than low achievers. Within the broad category of Indirect Reviewing Strategies, only the difference in using Metacognitive Reviewing Strategies is significant between the two groups (p=.009<.05). In the metacognitive category, high achievers and low achievers show differences in the four micro reviewing strategies (Self-evaluation 1, Arranging and planning learning 1, Arranging and planning learning 2, Arranging and planning learning 5). Thirdly, both Direct Reviewing Strategies and Indirect Reviewing Strategies are positively correlated with TEM4 scores at.01 level. Within the category of Direct Reviewing Strategies, all the three minor strategies--- Memory Reviewing Strategies, Cognitive Reviewing Strategies and Compensation Reviewing Strategies are also correlated with TEM4 scores. As for memory category, almost all the micro specific strategies are positively related to TEM4 scores except the strategy of Using images and sounds 2 and Frequent reviewing. In the indirect category, only the correlation between Social Reviewing Strategies and TEM4 scores is not significant. Metacognitive Reviewing Strategies are highly correlated with TEM4 scores. Within this category, most of the specific strategies are positively and significantly related to TEM4 scores. In light of these findings, this paper makes some pedagogical implications both for teachers and students. For teachers, they should take some measures to cultivate students’awareness of reviewing strategies and guide students to use some specific reviewing strategies which are highly and positively correlated to TEM4 scores. Moreover, they should encourage low achievers to practice reviewing strategies. For students, they must improve the awareness of reviewing strategy use, learn to select the proper reviewing strategies and make good use of reviewing strategies. |
