A learning strategy refers to the choice that the learner makes while learning or using a second language that affects learning from discourse moves or communication strategies, both of which aim at language use. People who are good at languages might tackle learning in different ways from those who are less good or they might behave in the same way but more efficiently.

Among the three main types of strategy based on cognitive psychology-- metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies and social strategies, I prefer the last one which means “learning by interacting with others, such as working with fellow students or asking teacher’s help”

In my study, more emphasis is placed on what I have learned. At the very beginning, I tried to memory the words selectively. The standard is whether the word has a practical value or not. Then I make sentences with those words and phrases. What’s more, I used the sentences to communicate through different outlets, orally or literally. Through communication, I can be well informed about the strong points and defects of my comprehension of language, which will offer guidance for my further study.

I’m willing to recommend social strategies in class for the reason that studying must meet the needs for practical use. What they have learned should be able to fulfill four types of communication— listening, speaking, reading and writing. Through communicating with other people, the overall language skills will be enhanced. In case of pronunciation, for example, quite a lot of students are influenced by their dialects. What they have taken for granted will be improved in talking with their fellow students or teachers.  

On the other hand, social communication can serve as a system applied to test what students have acquired. In traditional types of examinations, especially in China, multiple-choice questions take a lion’s share. But this question type, in itself, is inaccurate and impractical. It is evident that some native English speakers also feel frustrating in passing the English section in standard Chinese Entrance Examination. What we had expected is that the native speakers answer the questions with ease, but the result is otherwise. Most of the choices in multiple questions puzzle them for they can hardly tell the tiny differences among the given choices and they think it is unnecessary to distinguish them from one another in practical use.

Social effective strategies concern the ways in which learners select to interact with other learners and the native speakers. To certain extent, social effective strategies can be regarded as self-directing strategies, which include knowing about language (relating to what language and language learning involves); planning; and self-evaluation (relating to progress in learning and the learner’s response to the learning experience). In this sense, not only should the students select the materials for them to study, but also they should choose the means or access to communicating with other people, and decide a most effective channel to deliver the information. The essence of social effective strategies is to establish an interaction.

Learners have been found to vary considerably in both the overall frequency with which they employ strategies and also the particular types of strategies they tend to use. A key question is whether this variation is systematically related to proficiency and, more especially, to differential success in learning.

The choices of strategies are determined by the learners attitudes; affective states; and general factors.

Aptitude does not appear to be strongly related to strategy use. Aptitude is not as influential as learners’ beliefs. However, it is possible that learners with enhanced decontextualized language skills as one aspect of aptitude will be better able to talk about the strategies they use. Learners with high conceptual levels are better at describing their strategies than learners with low conceptual levels. It is possible that learning strategies are related to that part of language aptitude shared with a general intelligence factor.

Individual learner differences constitute one source of variation in the use of learning strategies. Another source is situational factors: the language being learnt, the setting in which learning takes place, and the tasks that the learner is asked to perform. Factors of a social nature, such as sex, have also been shown to influence strategy use.

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