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Zoe
Gavriilidou and Angeliki Psaltou-Joycey
Language learning strategies: an overview
The present article offers a brief overview of the field of
language learning strategies by following the growth of relevant
research over the past thirty years or so, which developed alongside
the increased attention to learner-centred instructional models of
foreign language teaching. As such, it highlights key concepts,
relates the use of strategies to other learner variables, and
touches on the issue of strategy instruction and its effect on
language learning.
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Sophia Papaefthymiou-Lytra
Communicating and learning strategies: two
faces of the same coin
Strategies in L2 learning and use are usually treated as strategies
to facilitate either communication or learning. As a result, they
are presented in a linear fashion that does not demonstrate their
interdependence and their interaction in the act of communication by
L2 language learners/users. In this paper, I will explore how
communicating and learning strategies interact and interrelate
making each communicating task a learning task, too, and vice versa.
The research reported here is based on EFL oral interaction corpora,
namely, EFL task interactions and EFL classroom discourse.1
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Zoe Gavriilidou and
Alexandros Papanis
The effect of strategy instruction on strategy
use by muslim pupils learning english as foreign language
The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of
strategy instruction on the use of strategies by Muslim primary
school EFL learners, when they engage in reading and listening
comprehension as well as vocabulary learning. 122 students attending
minority schools in Xanthi and Rodopi, aged from 10 to 12 years old,
participated in the study. They were divided into an experimental
group who followed a specially designed programme aiming at raising
learning strategy use, and a control group who followed only the
typical English language programme. Strategy use in both groups was
evaluated with a standardized questionnaire based on previous work
by Oxford (1990) and O’ Malley and Chamot (1990), distributed before
and immediately after the intervention programme. The results showed
that the learning of the experimental group, compared to the control
group, significantly improved because of an increased use of
metacognitive, cognitive, and socio-affective strategies. These
findings stress the need for designing special curricula for raising
students’ strategic use of language in second or foreign language
teaching.
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Polyxeni
Intze and Penelope Kambaki-Vougioukli
Lexical guessing: accuracy and confidence of
pupils of greek as a first or second language
In this piece of research, we are investigating the strategic
competence of 290, 14 year-old pupils, all attending secondary
schools in Xanthi and Rodopi, native and non native speakers of
Greek. More specifically, we are interested in our subjects’ use of
guessing in reading and how accurate such guesses are. Apart from
accuracy we are also investigating our subjects’ confidence that
they guessed right. The results yielded statistically significant
differences for gender-accuracy, age-accuracy, age-confidence as
well as mother tongue-accuracy and mother tongue-confidence
correlations.
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Athina
Vrettou
Language learning strategy employment of efl
greek-speaking learners in junior high school
In the past thirty years the area of language learning strategies
has witnessed prolific growth both in theory and research towards
the students’ involvement in decision-making for maximizing their
achievement. This research is a follow-up to a study for a doctoral
thesis with EFL Greek-speaking young learners. The aim is to further
provide learning strategy profiles of EFL students in the Greek
junior high school in relation to their language proficiency level,
gender, and motivation to learn English with pedagogical
implications for their teaching. In fact, all language proficiency
levels of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR)
by the Council of Europe (2001) were found and examined in relation
to strategy use. The study was conducted with 785 fifteenyear- old
participants in the third grade in junior high schools in the city
of Thessaloniki. The data analysis confirms the metacognitive
awareness of the students as far as their English learning is
concerned. Motivation to learn English appears to be the most
influential factor upon employment of strategies; the relationship
between strategies and proficiency level is substantiated and
significant gender differentiations are presented.
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Angeliki
Psaltou-Joycey and Zoe Kantaridou
Foreign language learning strategy profiles of
university students in greece
The purpose of the present study is to provide a profile of
university students’ most frequently used language learning
strategies when they learn or study foreign languages in an academic
context. A total of 1555 students from two universities in
Thessaloniki, Greece, attending foreign language courses in eight
fields of study participated in a survey in order to (a) provide the
students’ overall profile of language learning strategies and (b)
examine the students’ differences in the use of strategies in
relation to variables such as field of study, level of proficiency,
and gender. The results indicated significant differences in the
between-subjects tests in all six types of language strategies but,
in particular, more differences were indicated in the cognitive,
metacognitive, and social strategies. Proficiency level and gender
also indicated significant differences with higher level students
and females reporting using more strategies. Conclusions suggest
that instructors should implement strategy instruction in their
language courses mainly according to field of study, following the
students’ preferences to achieve highest motivation and
participation in the language courses.
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Maria Stathopoulou
and Doriana Nikaki
Test-taking strategies in the kpg reading
test: instrument construction & investigation results
This paper reports on results of one aspect of a larger research
project carried out at the Research Centre in English Language
Teaching, Testing and Assessment (RCEL), University of Athens. The
overall aim of the project is to investigate the test-taking
strategies used by Greek users of English when performing the
activities of the Greek State Language Exams, known as Kratiko
Pistopiitiko Glossomathias (KPG) and whether these can be
successfully taught. The aim of this paper is twofold. It firstly
aims at discussing findings regarding the testtaking strategies
candidates claim to use when responding to the KPG reading tasks
and, secondly, at presenting the research instrument used for such
an investigation. The research instrument, which is a closedresponse
questionnaire, has been designed at the RCEL and administered to
candidates who sat for the KPG examination at the November 2008
administration. The findings, which actually demystify the way
candidates deal with the reading activities, may prove useful not
only for teachers who prepare students for the KPG exam and for the
actual candidates but also for syllabus and materials designers. |
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