CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW
2.2 Language Learning Strategies
2.2.7 Strategies Utilisation in Language Task Completion
In language learning, there are some strategies that work well together in a
highly orchestrated manner for a certain language task while others do not
(Chamot & Kupper, 1989; Oxford, 2003). For instance, studies involving
L2 listening comprehension highlight the advantages of the strategies of
elaboration or world knowledge, inferencing, selective attention, word
derivation skills, verification of hypotheses, self-monitoring and self-
evaluation (Chamot & Kupper, 1989; Vandergrift, 1999). Likewise, in L2
writing, the strategies involved are planning, resourcing, drafting, revising,
editing, monitoring, evaluating, questioning, rereading and using L1
procedural knowledge (Pressley & Harris, 2008) that is provided through
strategy training is crucial for the successful completion of tasks as studies
have indicated that individuals who are academically successful or have
more expertise are generally more strategic than those who are
academically challenged or are less capable (Ehrman & Oxford, 1990;
Pressley, Woloshyn, Lsysnchuk, Martin, Wood & Willoughby, 1990, cited
in Alexander, Graham, & Harris, 1998).
Unsuccessful learners have been found to employ strategies in a random,
unrelated, and unregulated way while successful learners employ a well-
orchestrated strategy chain to accomplish their L2 tasks (Oxford, 2003).
Research indicates that successful learners deploy a broader range of
learning strategies for L2 learning significantly more frequently than
learners who are unsuccessful and that the strategies are different from
those often preferred by their unsuccessful peers. For instance, a study by
Qingquan, Chatupote and Teo (2008) showed that successful learners
employed memory, cognitive and metacognitive strategies more frequently
whereas their unsuccessful counterparts frequently employed
compensation strategies.
The study also noted that successful learners tended to use the affective
and social strategies at times while this was not the case with unsuccessful
learners. The successful learners showed that they could engage
themselves in emotional regulation when feeling nervous during L2
learning as well as participate actively in L2 classroom activities,
Qingquan, Chatupote and Teo (2008) revealed that successful learners
preferred to deploy deep strategies such as associations and L2-based
strategies; thus, implying that they might have more background
knowledge to assimilate new L2 input and a greater repertoire of English
resources stored in their long term memory to facilitate further information
processing than the unsuccessful learners who resorted to surface strategies
which do not contribute much to their L2 learning.
In the context of reading and writing, Baker and Boonkit (2004) examined
the learning strategies employed by successful and less successful learners
who were undergraduates at a Thai university taking reading and writing
courses in English for Academic Purposes (EAP). Using Oxford’s (1990)
six category taxonomy with an additional category of negative strategies,
the researchers found that students made significantly more frequent use of
metacognitive, cognitive and compensation strategies compared to
memory, social, affective and negative strategies as the overall strategy
used in EAP as a whole as well as in reading in particular. This
emphasised the need for instruction in academic English to focus on these
strategies. The findings regarding the lower use of social and affective
strategies in the questionnaire, however, were contradicted by the data
obtained from the interviews and journals. Baker and Boonkit (2004)
indicated that research on the learning strategies utilised in academic
writing was rather sparse and this should be addressed by future research
With regard to writing strategies, there appeared to be no significant
differences between successful and less successful learners in all six of
Oxford’s categories in this study by Baker and Boonkit (2004). However,
there was a significant difference between the use of negative strategies
and the six strategies in Oxford’s taxonomy, with negative strategies being
used less frequently overall. These negative strategies such as ‘I like to
start writing immediately without a plan,’ and ‘I like to write a draft in
Thai first and then translate it into English’ would have been taught as
being counterproductive to the writing process (Baker & Boonkit, 2004,
p. 309).
Although the successful learner group tended to make more use of
strategies, the differences are not statistically significant. Important
differences, however, were noted between successful and less successful
learners in two strategies related to the writing process that is in the
frequency of use of English and in the frequency of editing. The overall
strategy use in the study showed that translation or use of L1 at any stage
of the writing process, even in planning was perceived to be
counterproductive to good writing although this strategy appeared to be
more utilised by less successful learners to compensate for their lack of
proficiency in L2. Other strategies such as the use of feedback and use of
background or prior knowledge, where learners could draw on their own
knowledge or experience in generating ideas for writing are reported to be
important to L2 writers. These findings emphasised the importance of
content in facilitating the learners’ writing. It is warranted here that L2
relevant and interesting to the writers to motivate them. Baker and Boonkit
(2004) postulate that the existing literature on learning strategies utilised in
academic writing is rather sparse. Thus, a study investigating low-
proficiency Malay ESL learners’ use of the learning strategies in academic
writing would add to this existing body of knowledge which is rather
limited.
Successful learners are also more inclined to be ‘risk-takers’ who employ
whatever target language resources they have rather than revert to their L1
(Qingquan, Chatupote, & Teo, 2008). They demonstrate ‘active
participation, language use, positive attitude taking and learning-process
monitoring strategies’ to foster successful L2 learning whereas their
unsuccessful peers deploy strategies such as word-level vocabulary
learning, rote memory, as well as gesturing and L1-based strategies
(Qingquan, Chatupote, & Teo, 2008, p. 338). By being overly-dependent
on L1-based strategies, unsuccessful learners tend to experience problems
in communicating in L2 and this in turn reduces their desire as well as
opportunities for utilising L2. Qingquan, Chatupote and Teo (2008) posit
that frequent reliance on surface strategies coupled with low proficiency in
the target language (TL) has a negative impact on L2 learning, which in
turn leads to even more frequent application of the very same strategies.
This implies a link between frequency of strategy use and academic
achievement.
Having an interest in learning an L2, in this case English, can subsequently
well as have an impact on strategy use. Qingquan, Chatupote and Teo
(2008) found that successful learners had more interest in learning English
than the unsuccessful learners and this interest stirred them on to adopt a
positive attitude towards mistakes and the strategy of self-correction which
enabled them to monitor their learning process and ultimately promoted
language accuracy. Once again the use of strategy is influenced by the
level of the learner’s language proficiency and this explains why it is not
much utilised by unsuccessful learners.
Attempts have been made to remediate the unsuccessful language learners’
use of strategies through strategy training (Wenden & Rubin, 1987;
O'Malley & Chamot, 1990; O’Malley, Chamot, Stewner-Manzanares,
Küpper, & Russo, 1985, Oxford, 1990) and these have yielded some
promising results (Cohen & Aphek, 1980; Hosenfeld, 1984). However, as
not much research has been done on the actual strategies used by less
successful learners (Hosenfeld, 1984; Chamot & Kupper, 1989), there
appears to be a problem in designing an effective strategy training
programme for these learners and the approach taken has basically
involved describing the strategies of effective language learners where the
input is mainly from observations made by teachers or researchers and
generalised retrospective self-reports provided by learners (Vann &
Abraham, 1990). The present study on the effect of the SRSD intervention
on the writing ability and the use of learning strategies of low-proficiency
Malay ESL learners would serve to provide valuable insights to this
Currently, there is general acceptance that having a gamut of strategies,
regardless of whether they are general or domain/task specific, is essential
for academic success in any particular area (Wenden, 2002). Despite this
consensus in providing strategy training and its usefulness in developing
independent learners, Swan (2008) cautions that such training should not
be seen as a replacement for basic language teaching. He also notes that
‘the choice-of-solution’ element which is crucial to language learning is
not always evident in discussions on language-learning strategies, thus
making the concept of strategy become ‘too heterogeneous and all-
inclusive’ to be of real use (Swan, 2008, p. 264).