A study of adult language learning strategies used by full-time and part-time graduate English majors in China

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate language learning strategy use of full-time and part-time graduate English learners and its relationship with major factors affecting the learner's strategy use. As more and more people with different learning purposes become involved in all levels of foreign language learning in China, there is a need to study how they learn foreign language to better understand the learning process and, eventually, improve the effect and efficiency of foreign language learning. This quantitative research incorporated previous foreign language and second language research findings in language learning strategy. The study followed a four-step process. The first phase involved a comprehensive literature review and comparative analysis of theoretical frameworks. This phase of research also helped to identify the key terms and concepts critical to the current study and formulate the research question and additional in-depth survey questions. The second phase of the study used survey and open-ended questions to identify the full-time and part-time graduate learner's language learning strategy use and learner's feedback on the research construct. The third phase of the study was quantitative analysis. Through SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) statistic software employment the collected data was processed with different statistic measurements for the corresponding research question.The final phase is the analysis and discussion from which the main conclusions are drawn. They are: (1) part-time students reported more language learning strategy uses than full-time students. This finding has some relation to the learner's part-time academic status. (2) Both full-time and part-time students used more metacognitive strategies than other language learning strategies. The finding is congruent with the theory and research findings of adult learning characteristics. (3) The frequency orders of full-time and part-time students were almost identical. (4) In addition to the strongest relationship between marital status, academic status, metacognitive and social strategies, all of the other studied factors had statistically significant correlations with the general language learning strategies at different strength levels.