Exploring the Relationship between Learning Strategies Used in Language Learning

Abstract

Learning a language has never been an easy task for most learners and students performance greater differ in a single classroom despite being taught by the same teacher and expose to the same materials. Therefore, the main issue for this could possibly be due to the students’ own learning strategies that is causing them to excel or underperform in language learning. In the context of a Malaysian classroom, this needs to be understood as academicians are dealing with a multi-cultural group of students from various economical background that would definitely have an impact on how the learn a language. Therefore, this study aims to learn and answer the general question of how students’ learning strategies affect the process of how they learn languages. More specifically, this quantitative study is done to explore motivation factors for learning among undergraduates students from Universities in Malaysia. A purposive sample of 129 participants responded to the survey which was distributed via Google form. The results indicate that metacognitive self-regulation can positively impact learning by helping individuals monitor and adjust their learning strategies, identify areas where they need to improve their understanding, and set goals to guide their study activities. This finding is important as it can assist academicians to understand why some students are not performing in language learning and design a more systematic checklist for the students to monitor their own learning process.