The Relationship among Autonomy, Thinking Styles and Language Learning Strategy Use in Iranian EFL Learners

Abstract

The present paper aims at investigating the relationship among Iranian EFL learners’ attitudes to autonomous learning, thinking styles, and their language learning strategy use. The instruments were Cotterall’s (1995) Attitudes to Autonomous Language Learning Inventory (AALLI), Sternberg’s (1997) Thinking Styles Inventory (TSI) and Oxford's (1990) Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL). The participants were 92 Iranian EFL upper-intermediate and advanced learners of Hormozgan province. The results of the Pearson Product Moment Correlation indicated that a) there is a significant relationship between self-attitude to autonomy and all the subcategories of strategy use, but there is no significant relationship between beliefs about teacher’s role and strategy use except the social strategy b) a significant relationship exists between self-attitude to autonomy and most of the subcategories of thinking styles i.e. legislative, judicial, hierarchic, global, local, internal, external and liberal thinking styles and c) there is no significant difference between males and females in the preferences for strategy use and autonomy, however significant differences were found in the preferences for legislative, judicial and internal thinking styles.