Title
A Study on the Effects of Learning Strategies on a Learnerʼs
Achievement in Learning English
Author(s)
Maiko TSUCHIYA
Citation
福岡工業大学研究論集 第41巻 第2号（通巻62号） P133-P138
Issue Date
2009-2
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/11478/305
Right
Type
Departmental Bulletin Paper
Textversion publisher
福岡工業大学 機関リポジトリ
FITREPO
A Study on the Effects of Learning Strategies on a Learners
Achievement in Learning English
Maiko T
SUCHIYA(Department of Social and Environmental Studies)
Abstract
In order to examine the effects of learning strategies on achievements,an original questionnaire on ways of learning English was developed and distributed to 59 first-year university students. The results revealed that lower proficient learners took less effective ways in memorizing,did not utilize their test results for improvement,and poorly managed their study hours when compared to intermediate proficient learners. Moreover, stronger tendencies to persist in taking the memory-first policy were showed in lower proficient learners. The findings suggest that learning strategies have an effect on achievement, thus making learners think about their learning methods could be an important key to help raise their achievements as well as to avoid losing confidence in learning English.
Keywords:learning strategies, achievements, policies in learning, demotivating factors
１. Introduction
In order to find answers for the question of how teachers can help learners improve achievement in English learning and their English skills, some studies have focused on motivation which has been thought to be an indispensable factor to good learning. Until recently, the main concern of motivational research has been to explore what kinds of motivation learners have. In fact, lots of categories have been shown from various viewpoints,like students environ-ment, major, goal, needs, and so on. Over the last several years,however,studies on motivation have been changed in the direction of examining how teachers can actually raise a students motivation. Hiromori (2003)verifies the fact that a Japanese learners recognition of competence in learning English has a great influence on motivation from the view of the Self-Determination Theory. Tsuchiya (2006) proposes there are nine demotivating factors in lower proficiency (LP) Japanese English learners in a university and shows a possible reason why they don t try to study hard though they wish to be able to speak English well. It mentions that the most influential reason for a learners unmotivated state is their low confidence in learning English and it might be the main reason why they give up trying to study hard.
With the above findings,it is necessary to further focus on a learners recognition of his/her own competence and confidence which may have an effect on the learners
motivation to learn English. We should know what a learner experiences in the process of gaining or losing confidence,or what kind of differences lie behind between a learner who succeeds in recognizing competence or feels confident in learning English and a learner who doesn t.
Toward these questions, two objectives were set for the preliminary study:
1. To find the factor that might influence LP learners loss of confidence most, correlations among the nine demotivating factors will be examined,using the data gath-ered in Tsuchiya (2006). In this analysis, a learner factor, in other words,an intrinsic one not an external one,will be focused on since, to help LP learners grow out of their negative state, it is inevitable to make them recognize their own problems and try to challenge what they can do simul-taneously as teachers help them out.
2. To develop a questionnaire on the factor found in the first objective and carry out a survey on university students in two levels (intermediated level and lower level) so as to see in detail whether the factor actually causes some differ-ences between the two groups.
２. Correlations of reduced self-confidence with the other eight demotivating factors
In Tsuchiya(2006),nine demotivating factors of Japanese university students concerned with English study were proposed. They are 1) reduced self-confidence,2) classes, 3) compulsory nature of English study, 4) ways of learn-ing, 5) teachers, 6) negative group attitude, 7) negative 平成20年10月30日受付
attitude towards English itself, 8) lack of a positive English speaking model, and 9) negative attitude towards the English community. The correlations between reduced self-confidence and the other factors are shown in Table 1 below.
The most influential factor of reduced self-confidence was classes, followed by ways of learning, negative attitude towards English itself, and teachers. Problems related to classes are likely to be solved with efforts or approaches done by teachers, therefore, the ways of learning factor could remain the biggest reason for the reduction of confi-dence caused by the learners themselves. Based on the results, a questionnaire to investigate a learners ways of learning was developed and conducted on university stu-dents.
３. Method
3.1 Participants
Fifty nine freshmen from an institution of technology participated in the second part of this study. The
partici-pants were divided into two groups based on the score of a placement test that the institution conducted when they entered the school. The test was made by an academic society and covers the learning contents of senior high schools. A student who gets more than 80 percent of the answers correct is regarded as a higher proficiency learner. 60 percent of the answers correct indicate that s/he is in the intermediate level. The results of the tests showed that there were no higher proficiency learners. 18 participants (male:13 female:5)were judged as intermediate proficiency (IP) learners,and 41 participants (male:36,female:5)were judged as LP learners because their percentage of correct answers was less than 60 percent.
Before taking the questionnaire, participants answered three items in a background questionnaire, in which they were asked about whether they like to study English, whether they think that they are good at English, and whether they want to improve their English skills. Table 2 shows the results as a profile of each group.
3.2 Questionnaire
In order to grasp each learners ways and views of study-ing English,an original questionnaire was developed based mainly on the ideas of the three biased policies about learning strategies proposed by Ichikawa (2000). It was also based on opinions derived from interviews with ten university students about English learning methods.
Ichikawa mentions that individual beliefs about learning lie behind what kind of ways of learning a learner takes,and explains that Japanese students who tend to fail in learning are likely to have one strong biased policy, such as the memory-first policy, the result-first policy, or the time and amount-first policy,and they organize their ways of learning based on one of the policies. Memory-first policy learners think that memorizing facts or arranging proce-dures to memorize is the most important for learning, and
A Study on the Effects of Learning Strategies on a Learners Achievement in Learning English（Tsuchiya)
Table 1. Correlations between reduced self-confidence and other demotivating factors
Reduced self-confidence Reduced self-confidence
Classes
Ways of learning
Negative attitude towards English itself Teachers
Compulsory nature of English study Teachers
Negative group attitude
Lack of a positive speaking model Negative attitude to the English community 1.00 .57 .56 .41 .36 .31 .24 .08 .05 p ＜.01，p ＜.05
Table 2. Results of the background questionnaire Strongly
disagree Disagree Neutral Agree
Strongly agree LP 7 (17.1) 14 (34.1) 14 (34.1) 6 (14.6) 0 (0.0) Do you like to study
English ? IP 0 0 4 (22.2) 9 (50.0) 5 (27.8) LP 23 (56.1) 12 (29.3) 6 (14.6) 0 0 Are you good at English ?
IP 0 0 4 (22.2) 13 (72.2) 1 (5.6) LP 2 (4.9) 2 (4.9) 6 (14.6) 23 (56.1) 8 (19.5) Do you want to improve
your English skills ? IP 0 0 1 (5.6) 5 (27.8) 12 (66.7) n (%)
therefore, they make little progress in understanding. Result-first policy learners are not concerned with how to solve but how to get correct answers and don t try to learn from failures. Time and amount-first policy learners hardly care about what they are acquiring but only care about how long they study or how many papers they create. Ichikawa insists on the importance of making a balance between quality and quantity for good learning, and he gives some specific examples of what a learner should and should not do in his/her learning. These examples were arranged into the three categories and used to develop a questionnaire for this study.
In the interview, five LP and five IP learners were asked to talk about their ways of learning English, starting with the question of whether they had their own ways or not. If they answered that they had their own ways, they were asked to give a particular explanation of their methods and how they worked. Then,the same questions were asked to all the learners about how to memorize, (e.g., How have you tried to memorize English words or sentence struc-tures? ),about attitude to test or test results(e.g., Have you tried to review the contents of tests every time you took them? and What did you do when your test result was not good? ), and about study hours or amount of study (e.g., How do you count your self-study;by hours, amount, or something else? ).
Finally, a total of 22 question items (i.e., eight items for the memory-first policy, eight for the result-first policy, six for the time and amount-first policy) were made for the present study. All items were assessed by circling an appropriate number in a 5-point-Likert scale, from 1. strongly disagree to 5. strongly agree. To make the wording of the questionnaire sound natural in Japanese, thirteen items were shown in positive sentences and nine in negative sentences, then the former ones were calculated in reverse in gathering data.
3.3 Analysis Procedures
As for the data analysis,the mean scores of each policy as well as each item were calculated by groups and compared. Then, five question items whose mean scores were higher than others were picked out and carefully observed.
４. Results and Discussion
In Table 3,the mean scores and the standard deviations of each item of the LP and IP learners are presented. Items shaded in grey are the ones that were described in positive sentences and were calculated in reverse in gathering data.
Following that, the wording for the items was expressed opposite in meanings to the original ones in Table 3. For example, item No.11 originally appeared in the question-naire form as When I check answers,I check whether they are right or not, and moreover, I review my mistakes, but was shown in Table 3 as When I check answers against the teachers answer sheet,I just check whether they are right or not and I don t review my mistakes. Finally, all items were expressed in a negative sentence shown in Table 3. 4.1 Comparison of LP and IP learners by the mean
scores of the three policies
Figure 1 shows the results of the mean scores of the LP and IP learners in the three policies. Since it is supposed that the frequency distribution of LP group didn t form a normal one,t-tests weren t done for this comparison. Even when comparing the LP with the IP learners, not with higher proficiency learners, obvious differences can be found in the figure. According to the graph,the means of the LP learners are higher than those of the IP learners in all policies. This might support a teachers presumption that the lower achievement score a learner gets,the less effective ways of learning s/he has. Especially, when considering the highest score of the memory-first policy is 3.71 out of 5.00, it can be interpreted that they rarely adopted efficient ways of memorizing but tried to memorize just facts or procedures. That is true of one of the characteristics of an unsuccessful learner as Ichikawa mentions. Besides, it should be noted that there is a one-point difference on average in the memory-first policy and the result-first policy although it is a little gap in the time and amount-first policy. Judging from this, how to memorize what they need to memorize in learning English and how to manage mistakes in tests or in their daily works can be possible causes that brings the differences in achievement between the two levels of learners.
4.2 Question items for the five higher mean scores of the LP learners
Table 4 is a list of question items of the five higher mean scores of the LP learners. The point to observe carefully is that four of them are items from the memory-first policy. This indicates that the LP learners really have trouble with memorizing things in English. Item No.1 and No.5 relate to how to memorize English words efficiently. The higher means of these two items might show that the LP learners have tried to memorize English words in other inefficient ways. Still worse, considering that these are results from university students who have studied English for at least six
Table 3. Mean scores of each question item of LP and IP learners
LP IP Question items (1 8 for memory-first policy, 9 26 for result-first policy,
17 22 for time and amount-first policy) M SD M SD 1. When I try to memorize English words, I don t pay attention to its
derivative and other parts of speech. 4.12 0.87 2.78 1.26 2. I don t try to memorize a word or a sentence structure in an example
sentence. 3.78 1.06 2.67 1.24 3. I don t try to read aloud words and sentence structures in order to
memorize them. 3.07 1.23 2.22 1.26 4.I decide in advance how many times I will write each word when I try to
memorize English words. 3.32 1.49 3.78 1.48 5. To memorize new words, I don t make lists or vocabulary notebooks by
myself. 3.90 1.20 2.67 1.68 6. I think it is the most important to memorize in learning English. 3.61 1.09 2.00 0.84 7. I get confused when I take a test which covers various grammatical
sections. 4.05 1.07 2.67 1.09 8. I don t grasp by myself which grammatical items or units of a textbook
I ve already acquired. 3.80 0.98 2.89 1.02 9. When I make mistakes, I don t try to know the reason. 3.54 1.03 2.22 0.81 10.I don t think taking a test is a good chance to grasp my achievement or
the degree of understanding. 4.02 0.94 2.83 1.15 11. When I check answers against the teachers answer sheet, I just check
whether they are right or not and I don t review my mistakes. 3.27 1.34 2.33 1.28 12. When checking my understanding of a grammatical item with a drill
book by myself, I review the item just before the check. 2.88 1.22 2.78 1.44 13.Even if I get a correct answer in an English test by intuition,I don t try
to look into the question later. 3.68 1.08 2.22 1.21 14. When I get bad marks in an English test, I lose motivation to study. 3.32 1.08 2.39 1.15 15. When I get worse marks in an English test than I expected, I lose
motivation. 3.41 0.99 2.67 1.37 16. I don t try to put some kind of marks on mistakes with colored pen or
something to make my review effective. 3.39 1.20 2.00 1.50 17. How long I sit at my desk is related to my satisfaction of study. 3.00 1.29 2.17 1.29 18. How many questions and pages I finish is related to my satisfaction of
study. 3.17 1.18 2.39 1.13 19.I finish studying when the time has come I set for study in advance even
if there are unsolved questions. 3.12 1.14 2.11 1.13 20. When I come across questions that I can t answer in my homework, I
give up easily. 3.76 1.11 3.06 1.21 21.I want to finish homework as soon as possible rather than to understand
it well. 2.20 0.90 3.28 1.18 22. I spend the whole night before an English test cramming. 2.15 1.04 2.44 1.10
years, there is a possibility that they haven t been given the chance to learn proper memorization techniques. More-over, No7 and No.8 are the questions that ask participants whether they try to take the ways of learning in which they were trying to understand the learning contents, and the results suggest that learners with poor performances usually don t try to understand but just try to memorize as Ichikawa mentioned. The only different item is No. 10 from the result-first policy. Its higher means indicate that they don t use tests as tools that help point out their weaknesses or things they don t understand, in other words, it can be considered that tests haven t functioned as tests for the learners for many years.
５. Concluding Remarks
This study first examined what the most influential learn-ing factor that reduces the self-confidence of LP learners
while learning English is. It was found that ways of learn-ing have an influence on a learners confidence in learnlearn-ing English. In the second part of the study, an original questionnaire based on Ichikawas three biased policies in learning was developed. It was clearly shown as a piece of circumstantial evidence that LP learners use less effective ways in memorizing and have a less beneficial attitude towards both test results and study hours than IP learners do. In addition, we can see a characteristic that LP learners tend to have one strong biased learning belief as Ichikawa mentions, which is the memory-first policy in learning English. Although the questionnaire developed in this study focuses only on three aspects of ways of leaning English and leaves much room for improvement to grasp the overall learners learning strategies, this study provides an interrelation between achievement and ways of learning. It is significant to let learners know that there is a solution to any problem, and changing their ways could be one of the Table 4. Question items of the five higher means
Question items Policy M 1. When I try to memorize English words, I don t pay attention to its derivative and
other parts of speech. M 4.12 7. I get confused when I take a test which covers various grammatical sections. M 4.05 10. I don t think taking a test is a good chance to grasp my achievement or the degree
of understanding. R 4.02 5. To memorize new words, I don t make lists or vocabulary notebooks by myself. M 3.90 8. I don t grasp by myself which grammatical items or units of a textbook I ve already
acquired. M 3.80 M Memory-first policy R Result-first policy T/A Time and amount-first policy
solutions before losing their confidence in learning. It is believed that continuing to seek effective ways of learning is a part of learning. Learners need to be strongly aware that they can gain confidence through a series of successful experiences and they can be brought on by adequate prepa-ration using proper strategies. It is hoped that this study will contribute to reconsidering the importance of learning strategies and increasing the instruction of them to students in the classroom.
References
Hiromori,T.(2003).「学習者の動機づけは何によって高ま るのか」. JALT Journal, Vol.25, No2.
Ichikawa, S. (2000).『勉強法が変わる本』. 岩波書店. Tsuchiya, M. (2006). Factors in demotivation of lower
proficiency English learners at college.『英語と英語教 育』、 特別号、 87-96.
