Abstract
This article reports a large-scale survey on the use of language learning strategies by first-year college students in Taiwan, with the aim of describing what language learning strategies they reported using and what strategic patterns were formed. A total of 199 non-English majors responded to a survey designed by Oxford (1990), namely, the Strategies Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) (Version 7.0). The results show that today’s language learners self-reported using the following SILL strategies in the following order of frequency: compensation strategies, metacognitive strategies, social strategies, memory strategies, cognitive strategies, and affective strategies. In addition, the results also demonstrate that three SILL categories used today were used differently in the past: affective strategies, metacognitive strategies, and compensation strategies. Moreover, it was also found that males and females these days had slightly different strategic patterns from one another in learning English and also used slightly different ones in the past.
Highlights
Language learning strategies (LLS) have been a popular research topic in the field of foreign language learning over the past four decades, roughly speaking (Anam & Stracke, 2016; Cohen & Griffiths, 2015; Rose, Briggs, Boggs, Sergio, & Ivanova-Slavianskaia, 2018)
Two significant factors to account for this continual popularity are the empirical effects of LLS, which are meaningfully associated with language proficiency (Rao, 2016; Cáceres-Lorenzo, 2015), and their learning outcomes
In light of the changes described, this study aims to carry out a large-scale survey on the use of LLS by today’s language learners to find whether they have adopted new strategic patterns
Summary
Language learning strategies (LLS) have been a popular research topic in the field of foreign language learning over the past four decades, roughly speaking (Anam & Stracke, 2016; Cohen & Griffiths, 2015; Rose, Briggs, Boggs, Sergio, & Ivanova-Slavianskaia, 2018). Two significant factors to account for this continual popularity are the empirical effects of LLS, which are meaningfully associated with language proficiency (Rao, 2016; Cáceres-Lorenzo, 2015), and their learning outcomes (cf., Green & Oxford, 1995; Hsiao & Oxford, 2002; Khodadad & Kaur, 2019; Mizumoto & Takeuchi, 2009). An interesting question calling for an empirical revisit to further our understanding of LLS is whether or not today’s learners use LLS differently from those in the past Revisiting this issue is important in light of the drastic changes of context for today’s language learners. The fact that the world is becoming flatter than ever before (cf., Freidman, 2005) has brought more incentives for modern language learners (Chang, 2015), in terms of, for example, opportunities to interact with speakers of different languages, being taught by ijel.ccsenet.org
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