An Investigation into English Language Learning Strategies Employed by the Second-year Students at Thai Nguyen University of Information and Communication Technology
TNU-University of Information and Communication Technology, Vietnam
TNU-University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Vietnam
TNU-University of Education, Vietnam
ABSTRACT
This study aimed to investigate the learning strategies employed by the students at Thai Nguyen University of Information and Communication Technology, and to examine the differences in the students’ use of English language learning strategies according to their English proficiency. A total of 200 second-year students from the Department of Information Technology (IT) were selected as the participants of the study. All the participants learned English as a compulsory academic subject. The data collection instruments of the study were questionnaires adapted from the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) (Oxford, 1990) and interviews. The responses were interpreted through statistical analysis in terms of mean and standard deviation. The major findings of the study showed that the second-year students at ICTU were medium users of overall learning strategies. It was also found that the students used metacognitive strategies most frequently and memory ones least frequently. Additionally, the results of an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) indicated that there were significant differences in the use of learning strategies such as memory strategies, cognitive strategies, metacognitive strategies, and social strategies among different proficient students, but no significant differences were found in their use of compensation strategies and affective strategies. The results proved that the second-year ICTU students were medium users of strategies. The category of metacognitive strategies was most frequently used whereas the one of memory strategies was least frequently used among the second-year ICTU students. However, there were some individual strategies under or above the medium use level. Thus, the use of each individual learning strategy was not always corresponding to the use of the whole strategy category to which they belonged. Language proficiency had effects on the overall strategy use, especially significant differences in the four categories of strategy: memory strategies, cognitive strategies, metacognitive strategies and social strategies.
KEYWORDS
ICTU, SILL, language learning strategies, language proficiency, memory strategies, cognitive strategies, compensation strategies, metacognitive strategies, affective strategies, and social strategies