An investigation on the frequency of using learning strategies of the second year English majors in productive skills in English class at Saigon university

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC SÀI GÒN
SAIGON UNIVERSITY
TẠP CHÍ KHOA HỌC
SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL
ĐẠI HỌC SÀI GÒN
OF SAIGON UNIVERSITY
Số 64 (4/2019)
No. 64 (4/2019)
Email: ; Website:

AN INVESTIGATION ON THE FREQUENCY OF USING LEARNING
STRATEGIES OF THE SECOND-YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS IN
PRODUCTIVE SKILLS IN ENGLISH CLASS AT SAIGON UNIVERSITY
Khảo sát về tần suất sử dụng các chiến lược học tập của sinh viên năm hai chuyên
ngữ trong việc học các kỹ năng nghe nói tiếng Anh ở Trường Đại học Sài Gòn
ThS. Phạm Lê Kim Tuyến
Trường Đại học Sài Gòn
Abstract
This paper aims to investigate the autonomy of second-year English majors in English skill classes at
Sai Gon University through four main focuses such as learners’ motivation to be engaged in
autonomous learning, their attitudes towards autonomous learning, their level of self-esteem, and their
frequency of using learning strategies for language skills. 176 second – year English majors at SGU
answered the questionnaire from the researcher. The study’s findings show that the participants express
high frequencies of using learning strategies in productive skill in English skill class with 78% for
speaking skill, and 68% for listening skill. Besides, the most popular learning strategies applied are
metacognitive, cognitive, and compensation whereas memory, affective, and social ones are not fully
exploited. These findings lead to the fact that the participants are able to become considerably positive
autonomous learners. Finally, the research suggests some implications for cultivating the learners’
employment of learning strategies in productive skills as wells as fostering their autonomy in learning
English.
Keywords: English class, English majors, learning strategies, productive skills

Tóm tắt
Bài viết khảo sát việc tự học của sinh viên năm thứ hai chuyên ngữ trong các lớp học kỹ năng tiếng Anh
tại Đại học Sài Gòn với bốn vấn đề trọng tâm: động lực của người học để tham gia vào việc tự học, thái
độ của họ đối với việc tự học, mức độ tự tin, và tần suất sử dụng các chiến lược học tập cho các kỹ năng
ngôn ngữ của họ. 176 sinh viên chuyên ngữ năm hai tại Đại học Sài Gòn đã trả lời bảng câu hỏi khảo sát
về tần suất sử dụng các chiến lược học tập trong các giờ học kỹ năng Nghe, Nói. Nghiên cứu cho thấy
sinh viên được khảo sát thể hiện tần suất sử dụng các chiến lược học tập trong kỹ năng Nghe, Nói Tiếng
Anh rất cao với 78% đối với kỹ năng Nói và 68% đối với kỹ năng Nghe. Bên cạnh đó, các chiến lược
học tập được áp dụng phổ biến nhất là siêu nhận thức, nhận thức và khen thưởng trong khi các chiến
lược học tập liên quan đến trí nhớ, tình cảm và xã hội không được khai thác triệt để. Từ đó, có thể thấy
rằng đối tượng sinh viên được khảo sát có thể trở thành những người tự học thật sự rất tích cực. Nghiên
cứu cũng đưa ra một số đề xuất thực tiễn trong việc trau dồi cho người học sử dụng các chiến lược học
tập trong các kỹ năng Nghe, Nói, đó cũng là một phần trong việc thúc đẩy sự tự học của họ trong việc
học tiếng Anh.
Từ khóa: lớp học tiếng Anh, sinh viên chuyên ngữ, chiến lược học tập, kỹ năng nghe nói
Email:

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as evaluate their learners’ learning process
basing on the learning strategies they apply
in their autonomous studying.
2. Learning Strategies
2.1. Definitions of Learning Strategies
It seems that there has been no

unanimous opinion on the definition of
learning strategies. According to Elli
(2004, cited in Wang Xianrong, 2015, p.7),
the concept of learning strategies is still “a
somewhat fuzzy one” and “not easy to tie
down”. Hence, in an attempt to draw some
main characteristics of learning strategies,
we will review several definitions of
learning strategies given by a number of
leading figures in the second and foreign
language field.
O'Malley and Chamot (1990) define
learning strategies as, “...special thoughts
or behaviors that individuals use to help
them comprehend, learn, or retain new
information”. It can be understood from
this definition that learning strategies can
be either observable (behaviors) or
unobservable (thoughts). Besides, this
definition evidently mentions the goals of
learning strategies that are to help students
achieve comprehension and learning new
information.
Furthermore, Oxford (1990, cited in
Selma Deneme, 2008) provides one of the
most
comprehensive
definitions,
considering learning strategies as “specific
actions taken by the learner to make

learning easier, faster, more enjoyable,
more self-directed, and more transferable
to new situations”. In Oxford's (ibid.)
definition, the changed nature of learning
when learning is enhanced by strategies is
clearly described as “easier, faster, more
enjoyable, more self-directed, and more
transferable to new situations”.

1. Introduction
No matter how many attempts have
been
continuously
made
towards
enhancing the efficiency of English
teaching in Viet Nam, the quality of EFL
learning is still far from satisfactory,
especially for productive skills (listening
and speaking skills). There are, of course,
several reasons to blame for this, both
subjective and objective. However, it
would absolutely be a mistake if we did not
mention those stemming from learners
themselves. In fact, students think there is
no place other than the classroom where
they can learn English. They seem to
depend too much on their teachers without
the initiative to learn on their own.
Nevertheless, the fact is:

… No school, or even university, can
provide its pupils with all the
knowledge and the skills they will need
in their active adult lives. It is more
important for a young person to have
an understanding of himself or herself,
an awareness of the environment and
its workings, and to have learned how
to think and how to learn…
(Trim, 1988, cited in Lijuan Jiao,
2005, p. 27)
In this background, learning strategies
have been a buzzword within the context of
foreign language teaching in the past
decades, especially in relation to life-long
learning skills. More and more teachers are
focusing on developing students’ ability in
learning English independently with a hope
that they are more interested and active in
learning English, consequently learning
more effectively and gaining all-round
abilities. As a result, it is extremely
important for teachers to help students
master how to learn by themselves as well
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It can be seen that while the scholars
refer to “special” (O’Malley et al., 1990) or
“specific” (Oxford, 1990) actions, thoughts
and behaviors, they do not explicitly state
whether strategies must be conscious. In
other words, it is still not evident whether
consciousness is an essential feature of
learning strategies or not. Chamot (1992,
cited in Wang Xianrong, 2015) definitely
refers to strategies as “deliberate actions”,
but other researchers avoid addressing this
issue. Hence, we believe that strategies are
conscious in most cases, but sometimes
they are probably unconscious.
Additionally, a distinction has also been
made between learning strategies and study
skills that are sometimes interchangeably
used with each other. According to
O’Malley and Chamot (1990), they wrote:
“Study skills describe overt behavior, such
as taking notes, writing summaries, or using
reference
materials,
while
learning
strategies generally pertain to unobservable
mental processes.”
2.2. Classification of Learning Strategies
In fact, different scholars have their

own understanding of learning strategies. It
is no surprise that there exists a diversity of
classifications of learning strategies.
Rubin's (1981, cited in O’Malley and
Chamot, 1990) model of classification of
learning strategies in second language
acquisition makes a distinction between
“direct strategies” and “indirect strategies”.
“Direct strategies”, according to Rubin, are
those that contribute directly to the
learner’s language learning and include: (a)
classification/ verification, (b) monitoring,
(c) memorization, (d) guessing or inductive
inferencing, (e) deductive reasoning, and
(f) practice. “Indirect strategies” are those
that benefit language learning indirectly:

(a) creating opportunities for practice, and
(b) using production tricks such as using
circumlocutions, synonyms, or formulaic
interaction. As Rubin’s model was based
on her observations of the learners,
particularly the good language learners, it
certainly makes contribution to outlining
the important strategies used by successful
language learners.
Nevertheless, O’Malley and Chamot
(1990) distinguishes three major types of
learning strategies in accordance with the
level or type of processing involved:

“metacognitive
strategies”,
“cognitive
strategies”, and “social/ affective strategies”
Although these two researchers made
strenuous efforts in providing these useful
classifications, there was a need to develop
a more comprehensive classification
system. Oxford (1990) is generally
believed to have established one of the
most widely accepted classification
taxonomies in the language learning area.
Initially adopting a version of Rubin’s
direct or indirect distinction, Oxford (1990)
also divides language learning strategies
into two main classes, direct and indirect,
which are further divided into six
categories of learning strategies: memory
strategies,
cognitive
strategies,
compensation strategies, metacognitive
strategies, affective strategies, and social
strategies. Each of these will be
respectively identified below and also
illustrated with examples.
Memory strategies: are those used for
storage of information. They are specific
devices used by learners to make mental
linkages that will allow new information,

most often vocabulary, to enter and remain
in long-term memory, such as to make
associations with what has already been
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learned, to draw pictures to help remember
new words, and to repeatedly pronounce or
write new words in order to remember
them.
Cognitive strategies: are the mental
strategies learners use to make sense of
their learning. They help learners process
and use the language for learning or for
accomplishing a task involving the
language. Examples of cognitive strategies
are to watch TV in English, to listen to
radio or CDs in English, to use English
computer programs, and to find similarities
between first and second languages.
Compensation
Strategies:
are
intended to make up for missing
knowledge while listening, reading,
speaking, or writing. For instance, use

gestures or body language (for speaking),
rephrase (for speaking and writing), ask for
help (for listening, speaking, reading, or
writing), and make guesses based on the
context (for listening and reading)
Metacognitive Strategies: help learners
regulate their learning. “Meta” means
“above” or “beyond”, so metacognitive
strategies means “beyond” the cognitive.
They encompass the planning, organizing,
evaluation, and monitoring of one’s own
language learning, such as to organize time
for learning, or to check one's progress.
Affective strategies: are concerned
with the learner’s emotional requirements
such as confidence to help learners deal
with their own emotions, motivations,
attitudes while learning English. Examples
of such strategies are fo try to relax when
feeling anxious about learning, or to
reward oneself for succeeding.
Social strategies: refer to how learners
interact with other people in the context of
learning langu�N

TẠP CHÍ KHOA HỌC ĐẠI HỌC SÀI GÒN

FREQUENCY

Learning Strategies

Strategy
category

Very Often Sometimes Rarely Never
often
High Strategy
use

Medium
Strategy
use

Low Strategy
use

5. I think of what I have known Cognitive
about the topic

45%

20%

35%

6. I try to remember as many Memory
words as I can do to deal with the
topic

36%

36%

28%

7. I identify if it is a conversation, Cognitive
an advert, a news bulletin, or a
lecture

81%

11%

8%

8. I periodically check if the Metacognitive
information is making sense to me

66%

24%

10%

9. I pay attention to the tone of Cognitive
voice and any background noises
for clues

36%

25%

39%

10. I use other clues like key words Cognitive
to identify the rough gist

69%

26%

5%

11. I use context, like familiar Cognitive
words, pictures and the content to
help me guess the meanings of
unfamiliar words I hear

76%

15%

9%

12. I imagine scenes or draw Cognitive
pictures of what I am hearing

30%

16%

54%

13. I use my knowledge of the Cognitive
world to make sensible guesses

55%

22%

23%

14. I don’t give up and just make Compensation
wild guesses if I can’t hear
anything

62%

15%

23%

15. I try to break the stream of Cognitive
sounds down into individual words
and write them down to see if they
are like the words I know

53%

24%

23%

16. I listen out the names of people Cognitive
and places

49%

31%

20%

17. I listen out of grammar clues Cognitive
like tenses and pronouns

11%

41%

48%

While listening,….

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FREQUENCY

Learning Strategies

Strategy
category

Very Often Sometimes Rarely Never
often
High Strategy
use

Medium
Strategy
use

Low Strategy
use

18. I don’t panic when there is Compensation
something I don’t understand, but
I carry on listening for general
idea because I don’t need to
understand every word

79%

15%

6%

19. I try to take notes

Cognitive

75%

15%

10%

20. I encourage myself by saying Affective
positive statements such as “You
can do”

66%

17%

17%

21. I check whether I
Metacognitive
accomplished my task for listening

72%

6%

6%

22. I summarize (in my head or
writing) important information
that I heard.

Cognitive

38%

26%

20%

23. I rate my comprehension by
reflecting on how much I
understood what I heard

Metacognitive

87%

39%

28%

24. I check whether my predictions Metacognitive
were correct

75%

11%

16%

25. I decide whether the strategies
or techniques I used helped me
understand, and think of other
strategies that could have helped

78%

27%

35%

After listening,….

Metacognitive

It is evident from table 1 that the
picture emerging here was quite cheering
with seventeen out of the twentyfive listening strategy items surveyed
displaying the proportion of high strategy
use being well over 50%. This obviously
shows that the participants of the study
significantly showed high strategy use on
the majority of listening strategies given
in the table above. Interestingly enough,

these twenty-five strategies belonged to

four strategy categories: metacognitive,
cognitive, compensation, and affective
with the number of cognitive strategies
being the highest (9), followed by
metacognitive strategies (6), compensation
strategies (2), and affective strategies (1).
In addition, clearly, the most frequently
used strategy item in the cognitive strategy
was strategy number seven - “I identify if it
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is a conversation, an advert, a news
bulletin, or a lecture” (81%), whereas the
most frequently employed strategy items in
the metacognitive and compensation
categories were self-evaluation strategy
number twenty-one - “I check whether I
accomplished my task for listening” (88%)
and compensation strategy number
eighteen - “I don't panic when there is
something I don't understand. but I carry
on listening for general idea because I don't
need to understand every word” (79%).
Nonetheless, still, there exist five
listening strategies where well over 28%

of the English gifted learners displayed
their low strategy use, in which, most
noticeably, imagery strategy number
twelve in the cognitive category - “I
imagine scenes or draw pictures of what |
am hearing” was either “rarely” or “never”
used by as many as 54% of the participants
in the Study, making this strategy item
the least frequently adopted learning
strategy among the 25 listening strategies
examined. Next came elaboration strategy
number seventeen - “I listen out for
grammar clues like tenses and pronouns”
(48%), followed by elaboration Strategy
number nine - “I pay attention to the tone
of voice and any background noises
for clues” (39%), elaboration strategy
number five - “I think of what I have
known about the topic” (35%), and selfevaluation strategy number twenty- five “I decide whether the strategies or
techniques I used helped me understand,
and think of other strategies that could
have helped” (35%).
Now that we have had a brief account
of students’ frequencies of employing
learning strategies in the learning process,

let us now look at how frequently students
adopted the selected strategy items
according to listening stages, namely prelistening, while-listening, and postlistening respectively.
4.1.1. Students’ frequencies of

employing pre-listening strategies
As far as pre-listening strategies are
concerned, the majority of these strategy
items appeared to be of popularity among
the respondents with up to four out of the
six strategies displaying their high strategy
use by well over three-fourths of the
surveyed students. Among these four
learning strategies, surprisingly enough,
there were three metacognitive strategies
and one cognitive item, thus somehow
proving that the former seemed to be
preferably used in the pre-listening stage
than the latter. In details, metacognitive
strategy number one - “identifying the
purpose of a listening task”, metacognitive
strategy number two - “setting goals and
objectives”, and metacognitive strategy
number three - “focusing on specific
information” were either “very often” or
“often” used by 87%, 75%, and 78% of the
informants
respectively
while
the
corresponding figure for cognitive strategy
number four - “predicting outcomes” was
approximately 79%. Equally noticeably,
although nearly 35% of the participants in
the

claimed their low strategy use on
cognitive item number five - “I think what
I have known about the topic”, this strategy
item also showed their relatively high
Strategy use by roughly 45% of the
surveyed students. Another worthconsidering point is that the only memory
strategy number six - “I try to remember
as many words as I can to deal with the
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topic” was reported with well over 70%
of respondents claiming their high strategy
use and medium Strategy use in
comparison with only 28% of the students
showing their low strategy on, representing
a rather encouraging picture of the students
using memory Strategies to assist
themselves in their listening process.
4.1.2. Students’ frequencies of
employing while-listening strategies
As regards while-listening strategies,
another picture, which is not any less
cheering, is also revealed as almost 71% of
these fourteen strategy items in total were
displayed their high strategy use by over

half of the participants in the study. In
details, there are ten such learning
strategies, of which as many as six strategy
items fell into the category of cognitive
strategies, demonstrating a rather different
pattern compared with the picture
illustrated for pre-listening strategies where
the majority of the most frequently used
strategies were led by metacognitive
strategies. Among these six cognitive
items, strategy number seven took a lead
with as many as 81% of the respondents
claiming their high use on, followed by
inferencing strategy number eleven (76%)
and note-taking strategy number nineteen
(75%). It is also worth noticing that the
only affective strategy number twenty - “I
encourage myself by saying positive
statements such as “You can do it”” was
claimed their high strategy use by
approximately 66% of the respondents in
comparison with 17% displaying their
medium strategy use and 17% showing
their low strategy use on this strategy item,
thus suggesting its relatively popular use
among the students in the study.

Nevertheless, the most noticeable thing
from while-listening strategies is that
although there are only two compensation

strategies designed for listening skill, both
of them were reported with their high use
by well over 50% of the surveyed students,
implying that the majority of the
respondents either “very often” or “often”
incorporate compensation strategies into
their listening process.
4.1.3. Students’ frequencies of
employing post-listening strategies
With
respect
to
post-listening
strategies, we can clearly see that up to
three out of the five strategy items
altogether had their percentage of being
employed either “very often” or “often” by
over 50% of the participants in the study.
What is more, although there are four
metacognitive strategies designed for this
listening stage, only two out of the four
strategy items, comprising of selfevaluation strategies number twenty-one “I check whether I accomplished my task
for listening” and number twenty-four - “I
check whether my predictions were
correct”, were shown their high strategy
use by the majority of the respondents with
the corresponding figures being 88% and
72% respectively. It is also obvious that
well over half of the students (54%)
adopted the only cognitive strategy item

chosen for post-listening phase with high
strategy use.
4.2. Students’ frequencies of using
learning strategies in the speaking skill
Speaking is the productive skill in the
oral mode. Like the other skills speaking is
more complicated than it seems at first and
involves more than just pronouncing
words. In fact, second or foreign language
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learners often neglect or have difficulty
with oral production no matter how many
words and grammar rules they have
acquired. In addition, most often think that
the ability to speak a language is the
product of language learning, but speaking
is also a crucial part of the language
process. Furthermore, one special thing
about speaking is that we cannot practice
speaking when we are alone. For the other
three skills, we can do alone, on our own,
without anyone else. We can listen to the
radio alone. We can read a book alone. We
can write a letter alone. Nevertheless, we

cannot really speak alone. That is why we
should make every effort possible to find
somebody to speak with. Thus, speaking
strategies seem to be the key to difficulties
that most language learners encounter in
their master of spoken English. In this
study, I have chosen eighteen speaking
strategies, which are separated into three
sub-parts: pre-speaking, while-speaking,
and post-speaking strategies. The table
below sketches the picture about students’
frequencies of using learning strategies in
the speaking process:

Table 2: Students’ frequencies of using learning strategies in the speaking skill
FREQUENCY

Speaking Strategies

Strategy
category

Very Often Sometimes Rarely Never
often
High
Medium
Strategy use Strategy
use

Low Strategy
use

Before speaking, ….
1. I check that I understand the task Metacognitive
I have to do

91%

9%

0%

2. I decide my goal for speaking by Metacognitive
thinking
about
what
to
communicate

91%

7%

2%

3. I think about what information is Metacognitive
the most important to the listener
so I can focus on it

86%

6%

8%

4. I think of what I have known Cognitive
about the topic

77%

17%

6%

5. I brainstorm words and phrases I Memory
can use while talking

76%

22%

2%

77%

19%

4%

While speaking, …….
6. I try to figure out if I’m not Metacognitive
making sense to the listener so I
can correct myself

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FREQUENCY

Speaking Strategies

Strategy
category

Very Often Sometimes Rarely Never
often
High
Medium
Strategy use Strategy
use

Low Strategy
use

7. I focus on topics that I know Metacognitive

how to talk about, and I use
language structures I am familiar
with so that others can understand
me

85%

14%

1%

8. I imagine or draw a picture or Cognitive
situation that I want to talk about to
guide me when I’m speaking

49%

19%

32%

9. If I don’t know the word for Compensation
something, I describe it

63%

24%

13%

10. If I don’t know the word for Compensation
something, I substitute what I do
know how to say

52%

40%

8%

11. I use mime or gestures or a Compensation
facial expression when I can’t
think of the word for something

63%

30%

7%

12. If I don’t know the word for Compensation
something, I ask for help

40%

24%

36%

13. If I don’t know the word for Compensation

something, I show I need help such
as pausing, a puzzled expression,
etc.

37%

32%

31%

14. I try to guess what the other Compensation
person will say next in English

29%

27%

44%

15. I use “stalling strategies” like Compensation
“Well, now let me see, as a matter
of fact, let me think, I have never
given it a thought before, etc.

59%

31%

10%

16. I encourage myself by saying Affective
positive statements such as “You
can do”

66%

17%

17%

17. I check whether I accomplished my Metacognitive
goal for speaking

79%

15%

6%

18. I rate how well I did

70%

17%

13%

After speaking, …….

Metacognitive

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of the students either “very often” or
“often” adopted all the five selected prespeaking strategies, thus revealing their
even greater popularity among the
participants in the study in comparison
with pre-reading strategies. Specifically,
nearly 91% of the subjects reported their
high strategy use on metacognitive
strategies number one - “Identifying the
purpose of a learning task’ and number two
- “Setting goals and objectives” making
them the two most frequently used prespeaking strategies. What is more, there
seemed to be a gradual decline in the
proportion of students showing their high
strategy on metacognitive strategy number
three, cognitive strategy number four, and
memory strategy number five with the
corresponding figures being 86%, 77%,
and 76%. In fact, the memory strategy as a
pre-speaking strategy was implemented
with the greater rate of high strategy use
than memory strategies of the pre-listening
and pre-reading stages. Furthermore, from

the result above, we can see a great
dominance of metacognitive strategies over
cognitive strategies or memory ones at the
pre-reading stage.
4.2.2. Students’ frequencies of employing
while-speaking strategies
As far as while-speaking strategies are
concerned, as many as seven out of the
eleven strategy items altogether were
reported with high strategy use by well over
half of the students. These seven strategies
fell into three categories of strategy
including metacognitive, compensation,
and affective, in which the number of
compensation strategies led with four items
followed by metacognitive (2) and affective
(1), but it was metacognitive strategy that

The table tells us that over three-fourth
of the total eighteen speaking strategies
examined had their rate of high strategy
use accounting for well over 50%, which
appeared to be somehow very encouraging
compared with listening and reading
strategies. In details, there were fourteen
strategies being used either “very often” or
“often” by almost half of the participants,
in which up two strategies, strategy number
one and number two, were claimed with
their high strategy use by well over 90% of

the total students.
With respect to low strategy use,
noticeably enough, only four strategies
were reported by over 30% of the students.
Most prominently, strategy number
fourteen - “ I try to guess what the other
person will say next in English” was either
“rarely” or “never” employed by nearly
44% of the informants, implying clearly its
unpopularity among all the speaking
strategies surveyed. Next came strategy
number twelve (36%), number eight
(32%), and number thirteen (31%).
Another evident point to know from the
table is that none of the participants
displayed their low strategy use on the first
speaking strategy - “I check that I
understand the task I have to do”, making it
the only learning strategy all the subjects in
the study showed either high strategy use
or medium strategy use on.
4.2.1. Students’ frequencies of employing
pre-speaking strategies
All the pre-speaking strategies,
encouragingly enough, were employed
with high strategy use by the majority of
the students, which seemingly bore a
strong resemblance to pre- reading
strategies. It is apparent that well over 75%
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No. 64 (4/2019)

took a lead in terms of frequencies. It is
quite clear that metacognitive strategy
number seven - “I focus on topics that I
know how to talk about, and I use language
structures I am familiar with so that others
can understand me” had the highest
percentage of high strategy use (85%), and
another metacognitive strategy number six “I try to figure out if I'm not making sense
to the listener so I can correct myself” came
second with approximately 77% of the
respondents showing high strategy use on.
Another noticeable thing is that of the
seven compensation strategies designed for
speaking skill, interestingly enough,
although the four strategies, comprising of
strategies number nine, eleven, fifteen, and
ten, were reported with their proportion of
high strategy use being 63%, 63%, 59%,
and 52% respectively, there still lie the
other three strategies, all of which were
listed in the table summarizing the fourteen
least frequently used strategy items.
Besides, not less noticeably, cognitive
strategy number eight - “I imagine or draw

a picture or situation that I want to talk
about to help guide me when I'm speaking”,
by the same token, appeared to be among
the fourteen least frequently used strategy

items with the proportion of low strategy
use
accounting
for
nearly
32%.
Furthermore, it is clearly shown that the
only affective strategy - “Encouraging
oneself’ turned out to be relatively popular
among the respondents because as many as
66% of the surveyed students claimed that
they either “very often” or “often” adopted
it for their speaking process, proving once
and again the undeniable importance of the
affective strategy to facilitate the learning
process.
4.2.3. Students’ frequencies of employing
post-speaking strategies
With
respect
to
post-speaking
strategies, both of the metacognitive
strategies chosen specially for this speaking
stage were shown their high strategy use by

over 70% of the participants, displaying a
rather encouraging picture of students’
frequencies of employing post-speaking
strategies. In details, metacognitive strategy
number seven - “I check whether I
accomplished my goal for speaking” was
either “very often” or “often” adopted by up
to 79% of the informants, closely followed
by metacognitive strategy number eighteen
- “I rate how well I did it” with the
corresponding figure being 70%.

5. Discussion and Recommendations
Table 3: Breakdown of learning strategies by productive skills
Strategy category/ Language skill
Metacognitive
Cognitive
Compensation
Memory
Affective
Social
Total

Listening
8
13
2
1
1
0

25
142

Speaking
7
2
7
1
1
0
18

Total
15
15
9
2
2
0
43


PHẠM LÊ KIM TUYẾN

TẠP CHÍ KHOA HỌC ĐẠI HỌC SÀI GÒN

From Table 3, the picture for students’
frequencies of using learning strategies in
productive-skill learning process emerging
here is rather comforting. Among 43

learning strategies categorized by language
skills, there are 25 listening strategies and
18 speaking strategies in total. This means
that the number of learning strategies is
fairly equally distributed among two
productive skills. With respect to the six
strategy categories, interestingly enough,
we can see that metacognitive and
cognitive strategies appear to dominate in
listening skill strategies, whereas both
metacognitive strategies and compensation
skills seem to exert their dominance in
speaking skill. In other words, the most
obvious difference between the speaking
strategy pattern and that of listening skill is
that compensation strategies proved their
dominance over both metacognitive and
cognitive strategies in the speaking skill.
Furthermore, not less interestingly, only
one memory strategy item and one
affective strategy item designed for each
language skill is carefully chosen to
discuss the students’ frequencies of using
learning strategies for these two strategy
categories. Last but not least, it is also
apparent that although there still exist
enormous disparities about what strategy
categories were preferred for each phase of
language skills, most of the total students
in the study displayed preferences of

adopting metacognitive strategies with
high strategy use over other strategy
categories both before carrying out and
after finishing a language task.

All in all, by taking all these main
findings
mentioned
above
into
consideration, we can arrive at the
conclusion that surveyed second-year
English majors at SGU demonstrate a
quite high level of employing a range of
learning strategies in productive skills
in English class to study effectively
and independently. To a certain extent, it
means that they are capable of becoming
autonomous learners, which has been the
final target of many learning and teaching
methodologies.
With a desire to further promote the
autonomy of English majors at SGU,
bearing in my mind that although it is
rather encouraging to explore that the
majority of the students reported their high
strategy use on most of the learning
strategies, it is also apparent that students
do not fully exploit the range of learning
strategies given. Therefore, it is highly

recommended that English teachers should
pay more attention to empower their
students with the ability of learning how to
learn. For example, more concern should
be invested in raising the students’
awareness of adopting social strategies as
well as providing learner training because
social strategies, among the six strategy
categories, appeared to be the least fully
exploited among the six strategy
categories. It is the teacher's role to offer
their students a great deal of guidance in
order to help them decide on what
strategies that work for them and
experiment with those strategies, with
which they are not so familiar.

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No. 64 (4/2019)

REFERENCES
Lijuan, J. (2015). Promoting EFL Learner Autonomy. Sino-US English Teaching, 2 (5),
27-30.
O’Malley, J. & Chamot, A. (1990). Learning strategies in second language acquisition.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Oxford, R. (1990). Language Learning Strategies- What Every Teacher Should Know.

New York: Newbury House Publisher.
Selma, D. (2008) Language Learning Strategy Preferences of Turkish Students. Journal of
Language and Linguistic Studies, 4 (2).
Wang, X. (2015). A Tentative Study on Language Learning Strategies of Non-English
Majors at Teachers’ Colleges. M.A Thesis. Anhui Province: Anhui University.
Ngày nhận bài: 29/3/2019

Biên tập xong: 15/4/2019

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