Strategic Processing of Chinese Young English Language Learners in an International Standardized English Language Test.

Feifei Han

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01020

Abstract

Strategic competence is acknowledged to be able to explain variations in language test performance. Research with adult language test-takers has shown that strategic competence has dual components: strategic knowledge and strategic processing. Of the two components, strategic processing, which is state-like, unstable, and tends to fluctuate from contexts to contexts, is more closely related to language test performance. To date, none of the existing studies investigates strategic processing with children English language learners (ELLs) and explores the relationship between strategic processing in all the four skills of language learning and the test performance. Addressing these gaps, the current study examined the nature of strategic processing in listening, reading and writing, and speaking of 138 Chinese young ELLs in an international standardized English language test – Cambridge Young Learners English Tests – Flyers test. The three questionnaires regarding strategic processing were administered to the participants immediately following the completion of the test. The confirmatory factor analyses verified that the strategic processing construct in the four skills comprised of a cognitive and a metacognitive dimensions, which resembles the strategic processing of the adult language test-takers. The participants adopted significantly more metacognitive than cognitive strategies consistently in the three sections of the test, possibly due to the status of the test. Both cognitive and metacognitive strategic processing were moderately related to the test performance, explaining from 7 to 31% of the variance in the total shields of the test. Across the four skills, high-performing test-takers used both cognitive and metacognitive strategies more frequently than the moderate- and low-performing test-takers, even though whether such differences were due to their richer strategic knowledge or processing skills was unknown. The study contributes to strategic processing in language testing literature and also provides practical implications for English trainers of the young ELLs in China.

Highlights

With an increasingly wide-spread of English language in every domain worldwide, English proficiency tests play a powerful role in critical decision making processes, such as in deciding whether a student can enter a university, whether an individual can be successful in job hunting, or whether an applicant can obtain a permanent residency in an English speaking country; and serves to motivate/demotivate learners to sustain their efforts in learning English (Zhang et al, 2010)
In terms of the relationship between strategic processing and the total shields, the results showed that metacognitive strategic processing in listening (r = 0.29, p < 0.01) had slightly stronger association with the test performance than that between cognitive strategic processing in listening and the total shields (r = 0.27, p < 0.01)
Across the three sections of the Flyers test, the results revealed that two latent factors of strategic processing: one cognitive and one metacognitive factor, among Chinese young English language learners (ELLs)

Summary

Introduction

With an increasingly wide-spread of English language in every domain worldwide, English proficiency tests play a powerful role in critical decision making processes, such as in deciding whether a student can enter a university, whether an individual can be successful in job hunting, or whether an applicant can obtain a permanent residency in an English speaking country; and serves to motivate/demotivate learners to sustain their efforts in learning English (Zhang et al, 2010). The researchers concur that even though language ability is the major factor explaining success in language test performance/scores, a number of non-linguistic factors may contribute to such performance (Bachman, 2000; Bachman and Palmer, 2010; Purpura, 2014; Phakiti, 2016). Strategic competence is one of the non-linguistic factors, which have been researched among adult (e.g., Purpura, 1997, 1998, 1999; Phakiti, 2003a,b, 2006, 2008a,b) and adolescent (e.g., Nikolov, 2006) test-takers. With an increasing trend that English learning commences at an earlier age and more and more English language tests are designed for child English language learners (ELLs), research is needed to investigate strategic competence among the vast number of young children population.

Methods

Results

Conclusion