The overall mean for six types of language strateg- 123docz.net

Table 6 and chart 2 illustrate the language learning strategies that subjects employ. It can be found from chart 2 that there are differences in levels of use by learning strategy category. Mean score of overall strategies falls within the range from 3.22 to 4.32, which is defined by Oxford (1990) from medium to high level. Table 6 reveals that the mean of frequency of overall strategy use is 3.79 which is at a high level (with a range from 3.5 to 5). The most frequency used strategy is social strategy (mean = 4.32). Most of the students (86.5%) are reported as “agree and strongly agree” (often used) and only 2 students (2.1%) are reported as “disagree” (never or almost never used).

Besides, compensation strategy is found to be the least commonly used strategy among participants. Approximately 8.3 % (n=8) of subjects is in a low degree of compensation

3.67

4.12

3.22

3.75 3.68

4.32

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5

(LUAN.van.THAC.si).an.investigation.into.the.relationship.between.motivations.and.language.learning.strategies.of.first.year.students.at.faculty.of.electrical.engineering.technology..hanoi.university.of.industry(LUAN.van.THAC.si).an.investigation.into.the.relationship.between.motivations.and.language.learning.strategies.of.first.year.students.at.faculty.of.electrical.engineering.technology..hanoi.university.of.industry(LUAN.van.THAC.si).an.investigation.into.the.relationship.between.motivations.and.language.learning.strategies.of.first.year.students.at.faculty.of.electrical.engineering.technology..hanoi.university.of.industry(LUAN.van.THAC.si).an.investigation.into.the.relationship.between.motivations.and.language.learning.strategies.of.first.year.students.at.faculty.of.electrical.engineering.technology..hanoi.university.of.industry

strategy, 52.1% (n=50) of subjects is in medium degree and 39.6% (n=38) of subjects is in high degree of compensation strategy. The mean for each item on learning strategies are shown in Table 7.

Table 7: Descriptive Statistic for Each Language Strategy Use Item Types of language

strategy use Language strategy use items Mean

Memory strategies 3.67

Memory 1 11. I connect the sound of a new English word and an image or picture of the word to help remember the word.

3.94

Memory 2 12. I use flashcards to remember new English

words. 3.40

Cognitive strategies 4.12

Cognitive 1 13. I say or write new English words several times. 4.03 Cognitive 2 14. I watch English language TV shows spoken in

English or go to movies spoken in English. 4.21 Compensation

strategies 3.22

Compensation 1 15. I read English without looking up every new

word. 2.61

Compensation 2 16. If I can’t think of an English word, I use a word or phrase that means the same thing. 3.82 Metacognitive

strategies 3.75

Metacognitive 1 17. I notice my English mistakes and use that information to help me do better. 3.97

Metacognitive 2 18. I plan my schedule so I will have enough time

to study English. 3.53

Affective strategies 3.68

Affective 1 19. I try to relax whenever I feel afraid of using

English. 3.61

Affective 2 20. I talk to someone else about how I feel when I

am learning English. 3.74

Social strategies 4.32

Social 1 21. If I do not understand something in English, I ask the other person to slow down or say it again. 4.41 Social 2 22. I practice English with other students. 4.23 It is clear from table 7 that out of the twelve sub-groups of learning strategies, students indicates the greatest preference for asking the other person to slow down or say again if students do not understand something in English (M = 4.41) followed by practicing English with other students (M = 4.23) and watching English language TV shows spoken in English or go to movies spoken in English (M = 4.21). While reading English without looking up every new word (M = 2.61) and using flashcards to remember new English words (M = 3.4) are preferred least by the participants.

Besides, the result from the interview shed light on the students’ choice of learning strategies. Most of the students indicated that they use social strategies when asked what specific techniques and methods they found very useful in learning English and how they learned English.

“I participate in English center and clubs or practice speaking English with other members.” (S9)

“I record videos by myself, then post them on Facebook and ask for comments from my friends/ teachers”, “ask my teacher or English speakers to correct me as well as give feedback on my mistakes.” (S10)

Another interviewee claimed that he did not use social strategies; however, he mentioned learning and cooperating with native speakers as effective ways to enhance English proficiency, “I think practicing speaking English with native speakers is an effective way to improve my proficiency but I’ve never done it before because I’m afraid of misunderstanding or having troubles in acquiring what they are saying.” (S1) Regarding to their choices to cognitive strategies, all of the students agreed that it was quite helpful for their studying. For example, a student said “I listen to the lecture in class and take notes of important things (new words, meaning, pronunciation, etc.),

“listen to English songs and watch English films with Vietnamese subtitles or Vietnamese films shown with English subtitles.” (S3). Another student suggested subscribing to Kenny N Channel on Youtube to learn and improve pronunciation.

Other interviewees reported that they adopted metacognitive strategies as their learning methods such as using teacher’s feedback to eliminate their mistakes.

To sum up, the participants had different choices of the six types of language learning strategies. They were found to be from medium to high level in their deployment of learning strategies. In terms of the six subcategories, social and cognitive strategies were most frequently used by the participants, followed by meta-cognitive, affective and memory strategies. Compensation strategies was least used.

3.1.3. The relationship between students’ motivation and students’ strategy use

The first two questions are descriptive; therefore, the hypothesis for these questions was not mentioned. However, the following hypothesis was formulated to be answered for the last research questions:

H0: There is no meaningful relationship between the type of motivation and language learners’ choice of language learning strategies.

H1: There is a meaningful relationship between the type of motivation and language learners’ choice of language learning strategies.

With the aim of testing hypothesis H0, a correlational analysis was run by Pearson correlations (2-tailed) in SPSS program. For both motivation and strategy use factors regression method factor scores were generated by SPSS and afterwards the correlation coefficient (r) were calculated. In the field of statistics, r ≤ .20 is considered as low degree of correlation; r = (± 0.20 ~ ± 0.40) is considered as significantly correlated; r = (± 0.40 ~ ± 0.70) is considered as moderately significant correlation; r = (± 0.70 ~ ± 0.90) is considered as highly significantly correlated (Qin, 2003). The correlation results are presented in Table 8.

Table 8: Correlations of motivational and strategy use components Memory

strategies

Cognitive strategies

Compensa -tion strategies

Metacogni -tive strategies

Affective strategies

Social strategies

Intrinsic motivation

Pe.

Cor .258 * .277 ** .273 ** .287 * .198 .216 *

Sig. .011 .006 .007 .039 .054 .034

Instrument -al

orientation Pe.

Cor .185 .425 ** .014 .212 * .041 .277 **

Sig.

.072 .000 .890 .038 .690 .006

Integrative orientation

Cor .384 ** .369 ** -.034 .419 ** .136 .329 **

Sig. .000 .000 .744 .000 .185 .001 Competiti

ve-ness

Cor .343 ** .198 .090 .374 ** .242 * .157

Sig. .001 .053 .385 .000 .018 .126

Motivatio- nal strength

Cor -.036 -.185 .318 ** -.192 .130 -.145

Sig. .724 .071 .002 .061 .207 .160

Anxiety Pe.

Cor .313 ** .079 .269 ** .261 * .376 ** .024

Sig. .002 .447 .008 .010 .000 .820

Notes: **. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed), p<0.01.

*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed), p<0.05.

Pe.Cor = Pearson Correlation Sig = Sig. (2-tailed)

Table 8 represents the results of Pearson product moment correlation analysis which are reflected by three important trends. First of all, intrinsic motivation was significantly correlated with all types of LLS, apart from affective strategies because of p > 0.05 (p = .054). Secondly, instrumental orientation was moderately correlated with the use of cognitive strategies specified by the highest correlation coefficient, r = 0.425 (p< .05). The third striking point is that the motivational strength factor had a significant positive relationship with only one strategy use factor, that is compensation strategy (r = .318, p<0.01). Therefore, it can be seen that motivation seems to have a direct influence on the participants’ choice of language learning strategies; however, the relationships between each type of motivation and language learning strategies are not similar. In other words, aspects of motivation do not have a corresponding

influence on the use of strategy, and the strategy use is not equally affected by motivational factors.

Table 9: Correlation Coefficients between overall motivation and learning strategies

Overall strategi es

Memory strategies

Cognitive strategies

Compens -ation strategies

Metacog- nitive strategies

Affective strategies

Social strategies

Overall motivation

Pe.

Cor .521 ** .440 ** .320 ** .292 ** .376 ** .353 ** .239 *

Sig. .000 .000 .001 .004 .000 .000 .019

Notes: **. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed), p<0.01.

*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed), p<0.05.

Pe.Cor = Pearson Correlation Sig = Sig. (2-tailed)

Table 9 reveals that there is a higher correlation between overall motivation and overall strategies (r = .521). In other words, the more motivated the learners are to learn English, the more frequently they report using strategies. Moreover, the overall motivation has significant correlations with six categories of strategies, especially memory strategies (r = .440, p<.01).

On the whole, there was a significant correlation between overall motivation and overall strategies. The highest significant correlation belonged to that of cognitive strategies and instrumental orientation. Motivational strength showed a positive correlation with only compensation strategies.

3.2. Discussion

This section focuses on the discussion of the key findings regarding the students’

motivation in second language learning, their language learning strategy use and the relationship between both factors.

3.2.1. Motivation in second language learning

The results of this study have indicated that instrumental orientation and integrative orientation were the most influential factors on the participants’ decision of learning English. It can be noticed that this findings is in the line with the results of many related studies on second language learning motivation research conducted by Csizer &

Dửrnyei, 2005; Masgoret and Gardner, 2003. As an illustration, Csizer and Dửrnyei (2005) used four items to measure instrumental motivation of foreign language learning: become knowledgeable, second language important in the world, useful for travel and useful for career.

It was found that the participants in this study tended to have higher instrumental orientation, integrative orientations than competiveness. They also have a moderate degree of intrinsic motivation, while they have a comparatively lower degree of learning anxiety and motivational strength. In fact, most of participants learn English mainly for financial benefits such as obtaining a good job with high salary after graduation or passing the exam without paying for learning English again. They also take English courses for becoming knowledgeable such as being able to understand films, videos, music in English or personal desire like travelling abroad. On the contrary, some of them admitted that they did not like studying English and tried to complete this compulsory subject because of university language requirement.

Consequently, they had low motivational strength. Moreover, majority of students stated that learning English could provide them many opportunities to make friends

relationships. Therefore, the subjects showed a low degree of learning anxiety. The focus on instrumental motivation and examination or career orientation in particular were noticed to have darkened the intrinsic motivation, though some strong interest in western culture was claimed among the interviews.

3.2.2. The second language learning strategy use

The collected data indicated that a range of individual strategies was chosen by the participants. Significantly, the most frequently used strategy was social strategy which required learners to actively interact and learn with others. In previous studies, social strategies were shown to be the least frequently used by language learners (Griffiths &

Parr, 2001). Whereas, Liao (2000) revealed that in the Taiwanese context, the most frequently applied by learners was social strategies. A possible explanation for this finding may be that in order to suit international needs, the curriculum of teaching English has positively changed and teachers have also adopted communicative language teaching and learning. Therefore, students have focused more on communicative functions by working in pairs/ groups, cooperating with peers or actively asking questions to improve their English.

Following this strategy was cognitive strategy for understanding and producing the language. This finding stands in contrast with the finding of the previous studies (Li, 2010). The possible explanation for the result of the present study is that most Vietnamese students learn English by repetition (saying or writing new words several times, learning by heart) and taking notes of key points. Furthermore, with rapid development of the Internet and media, learners have more chances to approach to TV program, social networks; hence, they easily watch films, TV shows and videos in English as well as take advantages of these channels. In these ways, cognitive strategies can be effective for learners to improve second language acquisition, which was correspondent with Park’s (1995) study among Korean students.

Surprisingly, compensation strategy was the least frequently used strategy by students in the current study, which was contradicted to the previous research. In a study of Thai and Vietnamese university students’ language learning strategies, Khamkhien (2006) revealed that both groups of students from two countries used compensation strategy the most. In another study on language learning strategies and proficiency of Chinese university students in Thailand, Zhao (2009) found that compensation strategy was the most frequently used. These differences might come from students’ level in the current study. In the EFL context of this research, the participants studied at Faculty of Electrical Engineering Technology with low proficiency of English (elementary level).

Besides, they are freshmen at the first semester; therefore, they lack knowledge of new English words and background which leads to troubles in guessing, using synonyms and paraphrasing while speaking or writing.

3.2.3. The relationships between motivation in second language learning and language learning strategy use

The results implied that the participants’ learning motivation significantly correlated with strategy use, which is in line with the findings in other studies (Ehrman & Oxford, 1989; Oxford & Nyikos, 1989, Oxford, Oh, Ito, & Sumrall, 1993; Okada et al., 1996;

Schmidt & Watanabe, 2001). There are three remarkable findings that need to be discussed.

Firstly, it was indicated from the results that intrinsic motivation has positive correlation with all types of language learning strategies, except from affective strategies. In other words, learners who were intrinsically motivated were more likely to engage in different kinds of language learning strategies. The finding was consistent to the previous study by Ehrman & Oxford (1995) that intrinsic motivation was significantly correlated to the use of LLSs.

The overall mean for six types of language strategy use

The overall mean of six motivational types