the SILL?
The fourth research question aims to investigate whether significant interactions exist between linguistic cognates and gender with respect to language learning strategy use across the six-category strategies. The results of the meta-analysis showed that male and female learners from the same language family of English seemed to use strategies in a more similar way. Gender differences were not apparent in the subgroup of linguistic cognates
From the perspective of biopsychosocial hypotheses, language learners’ previous language learning experiences may provide some beneficial supports which interact with their biological development as to affect the language learning strategy use. The previous learning experiences of language learners from the same language family with English can be discussed from the effects of language distance and cross-linguistic influence which is theory-neutral to refer such phenomenon as
“transfer”, “intertransfer”, “avoidance”, “borrowing” and second language related aspects of language loss (Ellis, 2014). Odlin (1989) explained transfer is the influence resulting from similarities and differences between the target language and any other language that has been previously acquired. Language distance is a factor in both positive and negative transfer (Ellis, 2014).
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Two theoretical frameworks can be referenced to account for cross-linguistic influence: linguistic interdependence (Coady, 1997; Cummins, 2000; Diaz & Klingler, 1991; Verhoeven, 1994) and contrastive analysis (Conner, 1996; Ellis, 2014; Lado, 1964; Odlin, 1989). With regards to linguistic interdependence, Cummins (2000) suggested that L1 development can influence and facilitate the development of L2.
The interdependence hypothesis acknowledges that not all aspects of L1 facilitate L2 development equally. Exchanging shared information will allow L2 learners to find lexical and grammatical constituents that directly convey the meaning. When the contextual support is reduced, the use of L2 requires more precise knowledge of the lexicon and syntactic structures. Cummins (2000) also suggested that sufficient competence in L1 and L2 oral language will facilitate cross-linguistic transfer, although the precise level of L1 and L2 proficiency was never specified.
In contrastive analysis, the focus is also commonalities between L1 and L2, but the emphasis is on structural similarities between languages. Within this perspective the L1 and L2 are analyzed with the purpose of identifying structural (e.g. phonology, syntax, semantic) similarities and differences (Odlin, 1989), which can either facilitate or impede the acquisition of the L2. Structure similarities might lead to an easier acquisition of L2 because the learner may recognize features that are common for both languages. Consequently, it should be easier to learn an L2 that is close to the L1 than a language that is distant and has a very different structure (Connor, 1996;
Oldin, 1989).
In the results of the meta-analysis of the present study, most language learners from East Asia where Chinese is mainly used showed significant gender differences compared to language learners from linguistic cognates of English. This maybe because the language distance between Chinese and English is farther than that between English and other Indo-European languages. Chinese writing system is
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logographic while English is alphabetic. Moreover, Chinese lacks inflectional morphology almost entirely, and most words consist of either one or two syllable morphemes, especially two due to the very numerous compound words. This makes it noticeably more isolating than many other languages, such as English. English is considered as a type of analytic languages whose the meaning is expressed more by grammatical constructions rather than by morphology.
In Melby ‐ Lervåg and Lervåg’s (2011) meta-analysis study, cross-linguistic transfer of oral language, phonology and reading comprehension were investigated.
They coded the languages in two categories of Indo-European L1/ L2 and non-Indo-European L1/ Indo-European L2 and found a moderate to large correlation between L1 and L2 phonological awareness and decoding. Jeon & Yamashita’s (2014) meta-analysis also examined the overall average correlation in the research domain between passage-level L2 reading comprehension and other key reading component variables where L1 and L2 language distance were also investigated. The study found that the overall average correlation was significantly higher for linguistically similar than for linguistically dissimilar. If L1 reading comprehension is as L2 reading comprehension where existing a process that is composed of multiple components (e.g. decoding, morphology, vocabulary and grammar), then the effect of L1 and L2 language distance can be seen as positive evidence for cross-linguistic transfer of language knowledge between linguistically similar languages.
There is also other evidence of cross-linguistic effects on pronunciation (Purcell
& Suter, 1980; Flege, 1995; Major & Kim, 1996), vocabulary (Jarvis, 2000; Jiang, 2002), grammar (Collin, 2002), and discourse (Rutherford, 1983; Han, 2000) aspects as well as language reception. Ringbom (1992) suggested that the L1 constitutes
“potential knowledge” that can be drawn on more easily in decoding which involves form-to-function mapping, than in encoding, which involves function-to-form
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mapping. Akamatsu (2003) compared two groups of learners’ reading rate and comprehension of L2 English texts. The groups differed in terms of whether their L1 orthographic background was logographic (Chinese and Japanese) or alphabetic (Persian). The study showed Chinese and Japanese learners were more adversely affected by case alternation than the Persian Learners.
Wang and Koda (2005) investigated word identification skills of Chinese and Korean college students in an intensive English Language programme in the USA.
The results of their study reflected that the Korean learners were able to make use of the fact that Hangul (the Korean writing system) is alphabetic like English. Also, Paribakht’s (2005) study investigating 20 Fari-speaking university student’s ability to infer the meaning of unknown words from the English texts further tested the lexicalization hypothesis. The hypothesis argued learners will find it easier to infer the meaning of lexicalized than non-lexicalized words because the former correspond to the overlapping lemmas in their mental lexicon. The main finding was that the learners were about three times more successful in inferring the meanings of the lexicalized than the non-lexicalized items.
According to the studies of cross-linguistic influence, learning a language aside from the native language is far more complicated because not only learners’ own biological development but also learners’ language learning background make language learning varied and dissimilar. The effects of gender on the subgroup of linguistic cognates may play a negligible part since both gender groups may have equal abilities for learning a familiar language. They may adopt similar language learning strategies or they may not need to consume their energy in strategy use.
While in the other group of non-linguistic cognates, language learning strategy use remains necessary and female learners again have an advantage on language learning and significantly use more strategies than male learners.
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The discussion of the present study combined the perspectives of biological, psychosocial and biopsychosocial hypotheses to give a reasonable explanation of gender differences in language learning strategy use. In addition to the general picture that female learners use strategies more frequently than male learners. The researcher also found other variables which cause the gender differences to reduce the effects on language learning strategy use, such as learners who are more mature, learners with higher motivation and better learning beliefs, and learners from the same language family, emerge as a more dominant position in language learning. We are both biological and environment beings and our biological potential develops within an environment (Halpern, 2012). Although the biological gender may influence the use of language learning strategies fundamentally, learners should be able to create the promising environment for themselves and be aware that they are capable of adopting useful language learning strategies whenever they need.
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