THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE USE OF SPEAKING STRATEGIES AND PERFORMANCE ON IELTS SPEAKING TEST: A STUDY ON CHINESE COLLEGE STUDENTS

Abstract

By now, a host of achievements have been made on studies on the relationship between language learning strategies and language proficiency. The relationship between the use of speaking strategies and performance on oral English test, however, is hardly explored, especially within a Chinese context. The research aims to explore such a relationship between the application speaking strategies and IELTS speaking test performance, thereby improving oral English performance through appropriate strategy choosing and training. 93 Chinese postgraduate students who have taken IELTS at their undergraduate years answered a questionnaire regarding their use of speaking strategies, and the data are analyzed with IBM SPSS Version 22, which specifically involve a correlation analysis, regression analysis and ANOVA. The major findings are as follows: (1). The overall use of speaking strategies is at a medium frequency range; and participants are found to use compensation speaking strategy most frequently while cognitive speaking strategy is the least frequently used one. (2). IELTS speaking test performance is positively correlated with the use of all six types of speaking strategies.