A comparative study of English learning strategies among non-English majors in Mainland China and Taiwan

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Tuesday I)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Role of comparative studies in education policy

Proposal

A comparative study of English learning strategies among non-English majors in Mainland China and Taiwan

Background of the Study
English is a compulsory subject from the third year of formal schooling onwards in mainland China and Taiwan. Despite its pivotal role in education and commerce, many Chinese students across all levels of education are not proficient in the English language especially in terms of speaking.

Learning strategies have been the focus of a growing body of research over the past three decades, largely due to the recognition of learning strategies as playing a vital role in influencing the attainment of learning outcomes. The relation between individual background factors such as gender, academic major and learning strategies has attracted worldwide attention since Oxford and Nyikos’s seminal research in 1989.

Students in mainland China and Taiwan share some fundamental competences in studying such as memorizing and summarizing ideas and concepts in Asian educational systems. However, these two areas are governed by different ideologies (democracy vs. communism) and affected to different extents by Western values and cultures, which has seemed to influence various elements of the higher education such as curriculum design, graduation requirements, and evaluation system. Taiwan is more highly westernized than mainland China (Lin and Ho 2009), its higher education is deeply influenced by the United States.

Whether this mixed culture exerts different influences on students’ language learning strategy (LLS) is still unexplored. Therefore, this study aims to examine how cultural differences between Mainland China and Taiwan affect students’ LLS and fill the gap in Eastern cross-country studies on LLS.

Literature Review
Researchers’ attention in EFL has shifted from teachers’ teaching to students’ learning since the 1970s, and numerous studies have been undertaken from students’ perspective (see review in Wen & John, 2002). Some of these studies focus on students’ motivation (e.g. Gardner, 1985, cited in Wen & Johnson, 1997), while other studies have focused on students’ beliefs about language learning (e.g. Horwitz, 1987).

The relationship between the use of language learning strategy (LLS) to success in learning English as a foreign language has been the focus of a growing body of research. Skehan (1989, cited in Green and Oxford, 1995:262) asserts that LLSs are “one of the most important individual difference factors in L2 acquisition”. Oxford (1990) has pointed out how important learning strategies are, both in theory and in practice, for language learners. Oxford maintains that LLSs are “essential for developing communicative competence” (1990: 1). Furthermore, it has been found in Ehrman and Oxford’s (1990:312) study that more proficient language learners use a “wider range of LLSs than do less proficient learners”. Above all, learning strategies now attract considerable interest amongst researchers wishing to promote greater strategy use in order to directly influence and enhance the learning uptake of EFL/ESL students’ learning in the world.

With an increasing awareness of the importance of learning strategies, however, defining and classifying language learning strategies remains open to debate. By reviewing the literature I have decided to reference Oxford’s classification for this study because it is considered suitably comprehensive, detailed and systematic (Vidal, 2002). Oxford (1990:8) groups L2 learning strategies into direct and indirect strategies. Direct strategies are defined as those that directly involved in the language being learned using memory, cognitive, and compensation categories. Indirect L2 learning strategies are defined as those that, although not directly involving the target language, nevertheless are considered necessary or helpful for learning the language, which are metacognitive, affective, and social categories. According to Oxford (1990), direct and indirect strategies and these six strategy groupings function as a mutual support network within which various types of strategies support and enhance each other’s effects in order to improve L2 learning.

Research Objectives
A number of empirical studies which used Oxford’s (1990) Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) questionnaire as the main instrument have shown that the use of language learning strategies is associated with different variables, such as, degree of awareness, stage of learning, motivation level, teacher expectation, gender, attitudes and beliefs, teaching methods, learning styles, level of proficiency, task requirements, purpose for learning the language, cultural background and ethnicity. While there is little consensus on how these variables are connected to learning strategies.

Based on the elements above, this study conducts an exploratory comparison of non-English-major students’ strategy use in mainland China and Taiwan, and seeks to address the issue of interaction between learning strategies and gender, major (humanities or science and engineering), and motivation level. These three variables are deemed to have an influence on the process of acquisition. The purposes of this study are as follows:
1. To investigate and compare the current students’ use of LLS in mainland China and Taiwan
2. To explore the relationships of gender, major, and motivation with LLS in mainland China and Taiwan.
3. To probe into the reasons beneath the similarities and differences of LLS in mainland China and Taiwan.

Methodology
Oxford’s (1990) Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) is a questionnaire used extensively by researchers throughout the world to measure the frequency with which a student uses language learning strategies, and it will be the main instrument in this study.

This study combines qualitative and quantitative methods and interpret findings from a comprehensive perspective, with a focus on the possible influence of language education policy and associated pedagogy.

The participants are chosen from two universities across the Taiwan Strait, namely Taiwan and Southeast China. These places are chosen to be the two focal areas of study because they are geographically close, ethnically homogeneous, and all open to the modern market economy.

Author

• Meihua Zhu, Jimei University, National Chengchi University