Open AccessThis paper aims to investigate the overall characteristics of the rural and urban high school students’ learning strategy selection and use. The results indicate that the general frequency of the subjects’ learning strategies selection and use is not satisfying. Among the six learning strategies, the most used strategies are affective strategies, and the least used strategies by the subjects are social strategies. What’s more, the research results show that the urban students, compared to the rural ones, do better in using all the strategies. But through T- test analysis we can find that there is only significant difference in the using of compensation and social strategies between them and no evident distinction exists between the two groups when using metacognitive, cognitive, affective and memory strategies.