Middle school students' perceptions of language learning strategies

Language learning strategies have become the subject of this thesis by virtue of the necessity of learning English in today's world. This study investigates the middle school students' perceptions of language learning strategies. For this reason, Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL), designed by Oxford (1990) and developed for non-native English speakers by Cesur and Fer (2007), was administered to 260 students from 4 different schools in Şanlıurfa/Viranşehir. This study attempts to figure out the effect of language learning strategies on middle school students' English achievement in the light of research questions as follows. 1) What are the language learning strategies (LLS) employed by middle school students? 2) Which LLS are mostly used by middle school students? 3) Does the use of LLS vary according to gender? 4) Does the use of LLS vary according to middle school students' grades? 5) Do the students with higher scores think that they use more LLS than those with lower scores? 6) Does the use of LLS vary according to students'class levels? In order to understand the effects of variables and to what extent they effect language learning strategy use, it would be vital to give details about the process of the research. To express more precisely, SILL has 6 categories named as Memory Strategies, Cognitive Strategies, Compensation Strategies, Metacognitive Strategies, Affective Strategies and Social Strategies. While analyzing the data, SPSS was used to make basic calculations on a basis of research questions. In addition, T-test was applied to understand whether means of two groups differ from each other and One- way ANOVA was applied to investigate whether means of more than two groups statistically differed from each other. The results pointed out that metacognitive strategies were the most employed strategies by the students with a mean of 3.29 followed by the memory strategies with a slight difference. On the other hand, social strategies were the least used strategies with a mean score of 2.94. As for the language learning strategy use regarding gender, females employed more LLS than males did. In other words, in the use of memory, cognitive, metacognitive, affective and social strategies, females were better at employing them, however, in the use of compensation strategies, no statistically significant difference was observed. Another issue here to be discussed is whether students' language learning strategy use differed according to their exam grades which are based on marking procedure indicated by Primary School's Regulation of Ministry of Education. According to this regulation, the students whose averages of 1st and 2nd term English grades were between 0-44 were categorized as" less successful" ,45-69 categorized as "average" and 70-100 categorized as "more successful". The results revealed that the students categorized as more successful employed more memory, cognitive and metacognitive strategies than other students whereas in the use ofcompensation, affective and social strategies, no statistically significant difference was observed between groups. To sum up, out of 260 students,151 students were categorized as more successful and they preferred using more memory, cognitive and metacognitive strategies. However, in the use of compensation, affective and social strategies, no significant difference was observed. Lastly, when it was examined whether language learning strategy use varied according to students'class levels,5th year students were observed to employ memory, cognitive, compensation, affective and social strategies more than 6th, 7th and 8th year students while 8th year students were indicated to employ more metacognitive strategies than other grades. On the other hand, 6th and 7th year students were not observed to employ any specific strategy category more than others.