Learning Strategies among English Majors in CUAS英语专业学生的学习策略1

Learning Strategies among English Majors in CUAS英语专业学生的学习策略摘 要 学习策略包括在语言学习习得的运用的整个过程中某个特定阶段的心理和行为活动。因为学习策略能系统性的指导学习，所以对学习策略的研究在教育学中起着重要作用。本研究采用学习策略量表（SILL）对重庆文理学院外国语系英语专业大二以上的学生学习策略水平进行了初步的调查与探讨。调查结果表明：英语专业学生的学习策略总体水平还有待提高，而且学生对学习策略的理解和认识水平还不够科学和系统，仅停留在了解一些零碎的学习方法的水平上，对学习策略的运用也具有很强的偶然性。根据研究结果，本论文认为对英语专业学生学习策略的教学还有待加强，并从对学习策略教学和培养的探究来提出改进建议。 关键词：英语专业大学生;学习策略;学习策略教学 Abstract A language strategy consists of mental or behavioral activity related to some specific stage in the overall process of language acquisition or language use. And as learning strategies can systematically conduct learning, the research on it takes an important role in pedagogy. This study investigated the general level of learning strategies implemented by the English majors above the second-year in Chongqing University of Arts and Sciences (CUAS) with the Strategies Inventory for Language Learning (SILL). It was found that: First, the general strategy level of the English majors needs to be improved. Second, their knowledge about learning strategies is not systematic, which is just some isolated learning methods. Third, there is a contingency in their use of learning strategies. According to the result, it is advised that the training of learning strategies should be improved. Key words: English majors, learning strategies, learning strategies training Table of Contents 中文摘要 . Abstract . 1 Introduction . 1 2 Some Issues on Learning Strategies . 12.1 Defining Learning Strategies . 12.2 Classifying Learning Strategies . 22.3 The Relationship between Strategy Use and Learning Proficiency . . 3 3 The Investigation on Learning Strategies among EnglishMajors in CUAS . 43.1 Subject . 43.2 Instrument . 43.3 Data Collection . 53.4 Results and Analysis . 63.4.1 Results . 63.4.2 Analysis . 8 4 Suggestions to Train Students Learning Strategies . 9 5 Conclusion . 10 Bibliography . 11 Acknowledgements . 12 Appendix . 13Learning Strategies among English Majors in CUAS 1. IntroductionWith the approaching of the era of information and technology, it is very important for people to know “how to learn” instead of “what to learn”. The traditional education has become unfit for the development of the society. Thus teaching the student “how to learn” becomes an important goal of the reformation of education all over the world. As the main psychology system of conducting learning, the learning strategy becomes a hot subject of pedagogy and psychology.In the 1970s, linguists began to show an interest in the learning strategy. In the second language acquisition, we are always asking, “Why do some succeed in language learning while others fail in the same content?” In the past, we tried to find answers from teachers and teaching methods. In recent years there has been a shift in focus from the teacher to the learner, from exclusively focusing on the improvement of the teaching to an increased concern for how learners go about their tasks in a second language. It has become clearer that much of the responsibility for success in language learning rests with individual learners and with their ability to take full advantage of opportunities to learn. Individual differences have many indications, and among them, the learning strategy is a new area. Individual differences determine the learners choice of learning strategies. On the other hand the success that the learner experiences and his level of L2 proficiency can also affect his choice of strategies. (Ellis, 1994) Good teaching includes teaching students how to learn, how to think and how to motivate themselves. The studies in this area will help to explain the second language learners individual differences, and have a significant value to the teaching.Researches on learning strategies mainly concentrate to classification of strategies, variables affecting the choice of learning strategies, the relationship between strategies and achievement and learning strategy training. 2 Some Issues on Learning Strategies2.1 Defining Learning StrategiesIf we want to research learning strategies, the first thing we should do is to get a clear definition of learning strategies. However, it is not easy to do that because different scholars have different understandings on learning strategies. Chamot (1987) refers to learning strategies as “techniques or actions learners use to make language learning more successful, self-directed or enjoyable.” Rubins (1987) view of strategies relates more to how they might contribute directly to second language development, while Stern (1983) concerned more with the observability of strategies, describes a learning strategy as “a general approach to learning strategies to the encoding of information.The definitions above seem interchangeable, so a better way to define learning strategies is synthesizing the definitions. Rod Ellis (1994), in his book The Study of Second Language Acquisition puts it in this way, “a language strategy consists of mental or behavioral activity related to some specific stage in the overall process of language acquisition or language use”. In this study, the present writer will adopt this definition for research purposes.2.2 Classifying Learning StrategiesIn addition to list learning strategies, a few researchers have also attempted to classify them into taxonomies and typologies. Among them the present writer agrees with Oxfords classification (1990). She constructed a questionnaire entitled “Strategy Inventory for Language Learning” (SILL), which the present writer used in the investigation. The SILL has been developed from Oxfords fairly exhaustive list of strategies and has become popular for finding levels of strategy use through being applied in a variety of learning environments. According to Green and Oxford (1995), studies using the SILL have involved around 8,000 students in different parts of the world. The reasons why the SILL has been chosen are as follow: firstly, it is characterized by its comprehensiveness. It covers all the main aspects of learning strategies. Oxfords work uses a very wide definition of strategy including almost any decision taken in the process of language learning. It is useful to have memory, cognitive, meta-cognitive, social and affective strategies grouped together in one test to make learners aware of the complex strategies that can be exploited to aid their learning. Secondly, this focused attention on strategies provides an interest and promote many insights into what they and others do in order to facilitate learning. Some students might have never talked about their learning, and not all students have a full understanding of how they learn English and what they should do to achieve success. Students often expect teachers to have a good knowledge of this. To some extent, their need to see teachers providing this information is satisfied. The SILL makes learning strategies explicit and in some ways makes the complex task of learning a foreign language seems more accessible.Then she categorized these strategies into primary and secondary strategy types. After performing a number of statistical analyses on the SILL, Oxford (1990) presented a revised framework of learning strategies in which she classified learning strategies as having a direct or an indirect impact on learning a language. (see fig. 2.1) Fig. 2.1: Oxfords Classification LearningStrategies Direct Strategies Indirect Strategies 1. memory strategies 2. cognitive strategies 3. compensation strategies 1. meta-cognitive strategies 2. affective strategies 3. social strategiesEach strategy type was further represented by three subtypes were then represented by a number of individual strategies. Oxfords taxonomy is interesting for a few reasons. It is the first to explicitly indicated directionality in term of impact on language learning and to provide a hierarchical organization of strategies into levels, making it more than just a list. Second, this taxonomy is extremely comprehensive and again intuitively appealing. Finally, Oxfords taxonomy is unique in that it made no distinction between strategies that were invoked in both language learning and language use.2.3 The Relationship between Strategy Use and Learning ProficiencySo far there are series of studies, which have sought to investigate the relation of students leaning strategy use to their individual learning achievement. There are two kinds of correlational studies: the relation between frequency of strategy use and language proficiency, and the relation between specific strategies and L2 proficiency.An abundance of research has been conducted to find out whether the frequency of strategy use influences language proficiency, but no consistent picture has emerged so far. In the studies conducted in a variety of geographical and cultural settings, “students who were better in their language performance generally reported higher levels of overall strategy use and frequent use of a greater number of strategy categories” (Green and Oxford, 1995). A recent study by Wharton (2000) further supports the findings of the studies. Using the SILL, Wharton examined the self-reported learning strategy use of 678 university students learning Japanese and French as foreign languages in Singapore. The result showed the learners with higher language proficiency use more learning strategies than the others.Another area is the link between choice of strategies and learning achievement. Politzer and McGroarty (1985), for example, looked at the relationship between a range of “good learning behaviors” measured using questionnaires, and gain scores on an intense course. They reported mixed results: while the gain scores did not relate to their categories of strategies use as a whole, there were certain individual items which showed significant associations with certain of their proficiency measures.Wen Qiufang (1996) investigated 242 English majors from five universities in East China by questionnaires and found that the learning strategies they used are correlated with their English Band-4 achievements. Besides, Wu Yian, Liu Runqing et. al. from Beijing Foreign Studies University (1993) had the general investigation into the quality of Chinese English majors. They examined language learning strategy use of second-year English majors in China through the questionnaires. Data analysis revealed that four kinds of strategies, i.e. monitoring strategies, form practice strategies, function practice strategies and memory strategies had some effects on learning achievements. 3 The Investigation on Learning Strategies among English Majors in CUASTo date, there are many researches on the necessity of using learning strategies by the student of middle school or non-English majors in universities in China. However, few of the research were focus on the English majors. Do the English majors have a better implement of learning strategies than the others? In other words, is it necessary to train the English major in the use of learning strategies? The following investigation was designed to show the answer. The main objective of this investigation is to find out how English majors in CUAS employ learning strategies in learning English language.3.1 SubjectThe participants in this study were supposed to be 80 English majors in the Foreign Language Department of CUAS. They are above the second-year from 8 different classes. 5 male and 5 female students were chosen in each class as the participants. Less than half of them passed TEM-4 (Test for English Majors Band-4) or CET-6 (College English Test Band-6).The reasons were as follows: firstly the first year students have just entered the university and they might not have successfully and formed their own learning approaches and strategies. After two years of study in the university the students have adopted themselves to the study and courses in the university and have acquired their own learning strategies. Secondly, they tend to have more problems in their English learning, and they are more influenced by their previous learning. Given the two aspects, the students above the second-year were chosen for this investigation.3.2 InstrumentThe study investigated the general level of the learning strategies with the SILL (which was also mentioned above). There are 50 items in the SILL. The structure of the SILL is based on Oxfords classification system, which has been listed in the previous paragraphs. According to the system, the questionnaire contains altogether six parts as follow: Part A (items 1-9, memory strategies): relating to how students remember language; Part B (items10-23, cognitive strategies): relating to how students think about their learning; Part C (items 24-29, compensation strategies): these strategies enable students to make up for hunted knowledge; Part D (items 30-38, meta-cognitive strategies): relating to students feeling; Part E (items 39-44, affective strategies): relating to how students feeling; Part F (items 45-50, social strategies): these involve learning by interaction with others.For each item, there is a five-point scale ranging from 1 to 5. 1= “never or almost never true of me”, 2= “usually not true of me”, 3= “sometimes true of me”, 4= “usually true of me”, and 5= “always or almost always true of me”. The students would choose 1 from 1-5 to report their degree for each item. For the participants to understand clearly, the writer used Chinese version of the SILL.3.3 Data CollectionThe present writer and his friends distributed 80 questionnaires to the students. The students were given fifteen minutes to finish the questionnaire in classroom. All subjects received uniform instructions as to how to fill out the SILL in order to minimize confusion. The participants were not asked to report their own specific strategies. And we gave the subjects a list of strategies and asked them to report to make choice of each item. And we were able to get mean scores of each item in the questionnaire through the investigation. Based on the mean score, we would be able to analyze the characteristics of them. It is not difficult for the instruction and monitor of the investigation because the number of participants was small in each class. And most of the participants answered the questionnaires seriously. Then the writer and his friends took the answer sheets back. Due to various reasons there were 77 questionnaires, which were collected. However, the number of the questionnaires was enough to be calculated. The data collection in the study was conducted mainly through the questionnaire. For each item in the questionnaire, it is a five-point scale. The raw data were processed to obtain the mean score of each item. Each item was converted into three-frequency scale: low, medium and high (see Table 3.1)Table 3.1: Frequency Scale 3.4 Results and Analysis3.4.1 ResultsThe number of students choosing in the five-point scale, the mean score of each item and the average score of each part were calculated to get the mean scores for the whole subject. (see Table 3.2) 3.4.2 AnalysisThe statistics of the questionnaires showed that the English majors who were investigated use all the 6 strategies equally. And the strategies used mostly are compensation strategies and meta-cognitive strategies, followed by cognitive strategies and social strategies, then memory strategies and affective strategies.According to Table 3.2 and 3.3, we can see that the average score of each item ranged from 1.8 to 3.8, and most scores were between 2.4 to 3.6. It showed that the subjects were generally aware of using such learning strategies, but only at medium level.In Part A (item 1 to 9), the mean score of each item ranged from 2.4 to 3.1. 2 out of 9 items were below 2.5, and the other 7 items were between 2.5 to 3.4. In other words, the students sometimes used 7 memory strategies (item 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8 and 9). In Part B (item 10 to 23), the mean score of each item ranged from 2.3 to 3.8. 2 of the 14 items were below 2.5; 11 of the 14 items were between 2.5 to 3.4; 1 of the 14 items was above 3.4. That is to say, 11 cognitive strategies (item 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21 and 22) were sometimes used and one cognitive strategy (item 10) was usually used. In Part C (item 24 to 29), the mean score of each item ranged from 2.1 to 3.6. 1 of the 6 items was below 2.5; 4 of the 6 items were between 2.5 to 3.4; 1 of the 6 items was above 3.4. In other words, 4 compensation strategies (items 24, 25, 27 and 28) were sometimes used and one compensation strategy (item 29) was usually used. In Part D (item 30 to 38), the mean score of each item ranged from 2.7 to 3.3. All the 9 items were between 2.5 to 3.4. Namely, all the 9 meta-cognitive strategies were sometimes used. In Part E (item 39 to 44), the mean score of each item ranged from 1.8 to 3.3. 2 of the 6 items were below 2.5, and the other 4 items were between 2.5 to 3.4. In other words, 4 affective strategies (item 39, 40, 41, 42 and 44) were sometimes used. In Part F (item 45 to 50), the mean score of each ranged from 2.2 to 3.5. 1 of the 6 items was below 2.5; 3 of them were between 2.5 to 3.4; 2 of them were above 3.4. Namely, 3 social strategies (item 47, 48 and 49) were some times used and 2 social strategies (item 45 and 50) were usually used.Above all, the students believe they were using learning strategies, but they may not have understood the whole process of language learning and the role of learning strategies in the learning process. And the students had a strong desire to learning English well, but they lack systematic knowledge about learning strategies. And it was found that: First, the general strategy levels of the English majors need to be improved. Second, their knowledge about learning strategies is not systematic, which is just some isolated learning methods. Third, there is a contingency in their use of learning strategies. The statistics show that the level of learning strategies performed by the English major is not as high as it was supposed to be. Therefore it is crucial that the language teachers should take some measures to change this situation and help students in an effective way. 4 Suggestions to Train Students Learning StrategiesThe ultimate goal of research of language learning stra