Investigation of university preparatory class students' foreign language learning strategies in terms of different variables

The purpose of this study is to examine the university prep class students' usage level of language learning strategies in terms of several variables such as gender, the type of graduated high school, faculty, their English level, duration of the time spent for English outside the classroom, how this time is utilized and the status preparatory education (compulsory or voluntary ). The study was carried out with 200 students studying School of Foreign Languages at Fırat University. As a data collection tool, the Language Learning Strategies Inventory developed by Oxford (1990) and adapted to Turkish by Cesur and Fer (2007) was used. For analysis of the Data, t-test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), Man Whitney U and Kruskall Wallis H and Tukey tests were used. According to the results of the study, it was determined that the language strategies use of the students were at moderate level. It was determined that strategies used by students most frequently were metacognitive strategies and the least frequently used strategies were affective strategies. It has been found out that the most frequently used strategy of the students is a sub-scale of metacognitive strategies ''I evaluate how much I improve my English'' and the least frequently used strategy is a sub-scale of affective strategies ''I write down my feelings while learning language''. In terms of gender, a significant difference was observed in favor of female students. According to the type faculty, English Language and Literature students have higher averages than engineering faculty students. According to the graduated high school type variable, it has been observed that vocational high school students have higher averages than the students graduated from other type of high schools. When the level of English proficiency is examined, a significant difference has been observed in favor of students at C1 and B2 levels. When the time allocated to English is taken into consideration, it can be seen that the average of those who spend 4-6 hours per week in English have higher scores than those who spend 1-3 hours. When it comes to how they spend this period of time, it has been seen that those who spend time reading have higher strategy usage compared to those who watch movies. There was no significant difference according to the preparatory education status (mandatory or voluntary).