Plurilingualism, language learning strategy use and learning style preferences

Abstract

The present paper investigates the language learning strategy use and learning style preferences of Greek university students in order to find out the possible relations that hold between degrees of plurilingualism, strategy use and learning styles. The subjects were 1555 Greek undergraduates from a number of disciplines, learning foreign languages in an academic context. They were classified as bilingual or trilingual students according to the language certificates they hold in any of the proficiency levels stated by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) for the languages taught in tertiary education in Greece (English, French, Italian, German and Spanish). The results of the study indicated that (a) trilingual students used more strategies more frequently than bilinguals, especially those that promote metalinguistic awareness; (b) more advanced trilinguals made more frequent use of strategies, which mainly came from the cognitive and metacognitive categories; and (c) trilingual students were significantly less concrete-sequential than bilinguals, irrespective of the level of proficiency in the target language of the latter.