Successful female adult language learners : their strategy use in second language learning
Date
1997
Authors
Bradfield, Marjorie Keturah Elizabeth
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Abstract
The purpose of this study was twofold: first to identify the language learning strategies (LLS) of seven successful adult female learners enrolled in English as a Second Language (ESL) at the University of Victoria; and, secondly, to describe in what naturalistic life circumstances or situations these strategies are revealed. The learners were self-selected for the study. All were enrolled in a 410, intermediate level ESL course and ranged from twenty-one to twenty-seven years of age. There were six Asian participants and one Mexican. Experience in ESL study ranged from approximately one year to eleven years.
The choice of female participants was based on convenience; suggestions in existing research about women's differentiated use of LLS; and, the researcher's own career role in association with young women studying ESL. Although gender was not a specific focus in the study, the female researcher and participants share a common phenomenological reality. This prompted questions about assumptions, methods, and findings of the study, as well as its conceptual framework.
Three data collection processes were used to measure learners' reported use of LLS. The first was the Strategies Inventory in Language Leaming (SILL) Oxford, 1989), a fifty item, Likert scaled summative tool measuring LLS preference in six macrostrategy areas. The second and third data collection methods were qualitative. Employing the second method, participants were interviewed twice by the researcher. Using the third methodology, participants kept reflective notes/mini-diary studies for a period of two weeks.
The strategy category system from the SILL was used to organize the qualitative data from the interviews and reflective notes. The most significant findings from the study were:
1. The participants used all categories of LLS as measured by SILL, but
tended to prefer cognitive, metacognitive, and affective strategies;
2. ESL appears to be learned in a variety of ways depending on individual psychological and social situational factors; and,
3. Learners optimized multiple life situations-formal and informal; psychological; and, social- to realize their learning goals and aspirations.