A cross-cultural study on language learning strategy use of Syrian and Turkish high school EFL students

The study aims to investigate if there are any statistically significant differences between culture and perceived language learning strategy use of Syrian and Turkish high school EFL students and understand how they differ in terms of using learning strategies for their L2 achievement. The population of this study consists of 89 Syrian and 90 Turkish 9th and 10th-grade Anatolian high school EFL students with an age range of 15-16 in Gaziantep-Nizip in Turkey. As the data instrument, Turkish version of SILL (Strategy Inventory of Language Learning), which was originally designed by Oxford in 1989. As the second data collection instrument, a semi-structured interview was utilized to discover the preferred strategies used by language learners to explore the subjective viewpoints of the participants. In this study, a mixed-method design was utilized, and multiple sampling procedure was used to select the participants. Descriptive statistics and independent samples t-test were used to see the difference between the two cultures` learning strategy preferences gathered from the SILL Questionnaire. The most obvious finding emerging from this study is that Syrian participants showed more language learning strategy use than Turkish participants in all the categories. Based on the findings, the difference was found at the item level, not the category level. While the rate of using social strategies was measured as the highest for Syrians, Turkish participants mostly tended to use metacognitive strategies. The results have shown that ethnicity and linguistic disparities as well as different cultural perspectives and education systems influence learners' approach to learning and preference for different learning strategies. The findings of this study suggested that education system, and teachers' behavior affect learners' attitudes towards lesson and strategy preferences.