Testing a Social Psychological Model of Strategy Use with Students of English as a Foreign Language

Abstract

This replication study tested MacIntyre's Social Psychological Model of Strategy Use. Participants were 137 first-year college students (100 men and 37 women), all in their late teens or early 20s, learning English as a foreign language in a university in Taiwan. McIntyre specified three conditions for use of language-learning strategies in his model: awareness of the strategy, having a reason to use it, and not having a reason not to use it. Stepwise multiple regression analyses of data measured by Oxford's 50-item Strategy Inventory for Language Learning partially support this model because only Knowledge about the Strategy (representing the first condition) and Difficulty about Using It (representing the third condition) made significant independent contributions to the prediction of use of most of the 50 strategies. Close examination of the results poses questions about MacIntyre and Noels' thesis, as implied in their revised model, that reason to use the strategy and reason not to use the strategy are independent. The present replication suggests a need for further revision of the model. Use of methods more advanced than the multiple regression is recommended to test and refine the model.