The Study of Learning Strategies Used by Male/Female Monolingual and Bilingual Speakers as EFL Learners
By Mohammad Bagher Shabani & Saeed Najafi Sarem, llam University
Abstract
This study was an attempt to investigate the learning strategy use of monolinguals and bilinguals in approaching English as a foreign language. It is also an attempt to compare the strategy use of male and female bilinguals. For this purpose, 30 Persian-speaking monolinguals (15 males and 15 females) and 30 Kurdish-Persian speaking bilinguals (15 males and 15 females) were selected from among Iranian EFL learners studying English Literature at Ilam State and Azad universities. They were asked to fill out Oxford’s (1980, 1990) the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL). The result of the independent t-test revealed that there wasn’t any significant difference between the two groups in their strategy use. The results of the chi-square test also indicated that there was not any significant difference in the strategy use for individual items between the two groups except for three items. After that, running the independent t-test showed that the difference between male and female bilinguals’ strategy use was statistically significant in favor of male bilinguals. The use of separate t-tests for the six categories of the SILL indicated that the strategy use was again statistically significant in favor of male bilinguals. Then, the use of chi-square test showed that for 12 items on the SILL the difference between the strategy use of male and female bilinguals was statistically significant in favor of males.
Keywords: Language Learning Strategies (LLS), Monolingual, Bilingual
Click here to download / read the full paper
1 comment