2. Literature Review
2.3 Studies on Proficiency and Gender Differences on Strategy Use
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strategy use (Green & Oxford, 1995; Oxford & Nyikos, 1989; Park, 1997).
In addition to motivation, Oxford goes on stating, “ General learning style, such as field dependence-independence, analytic-global orientation, or the judging-perceiving mode, has a strong effect on the strategies that language learners use” (1990, p. 13). Her statement is supported by the findings in Oxford and Nyikos (1989) that learning style is one of the deciding factors that influence the choice of strategy use. As for gender differences, it is commonly believed that girls have better verbal ability than boys, stimulating some
researchers to take the factor into consideration in language learning (Green & Oxford, 1995;
Oxford & Erhman, 1989). The results reach an agreement that girls tend to have a greater use of overall strategies than do boys.
To explore deeper into strategy use and offer a substantial body of literature on strategy preferences, investigators have carried out more research into the field of language learning from different perspectives based on their own interests. Among possible variables reviewed above, proficiency and gender differences on the selection of strategy will be main foci in the current study.
2.3 Studies on Proficiency and Gender Differences on Strategy Use
As stated in the former section, literature will firstly stress on reviewing the effect of proficiency on the strategy use. Next, studies on gender differences will be presented in the following sub-sections.
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2.3.1 Language Proficiency and Language Learning Strategies
General language proficiency, as an important factor on strategy use, has been studied since early 1970s. Rubin (1975) and Stern (1975) pioneered in investigating features of good language learners and found that they tend to pay more attention to their own learning with a more active attitude by adopting strategies concerning cognitive and metacognitive thinking.
Being inspired by former researchers, Oxford (1995) researched on the effect of language proficiency on strategy use with her associate, Green. Believing that good language learners seem to apply a large number of LLS, such as “ taking advantage of practice opportunities”,
“willingly and accurately guessing,” or “consciously developing the L2 as a meaning system and a structure system” (p. 262), they found more successful learners seem to have a greater use of LLS and use several LLS in combination properly. In another study on Korean college students, Park (1997) grouped learners according to the frequency use of LLS and their performance on TOEFL test, aiming on the relationship between learners’ L2 proficiency and the use of LLS. The results not only showed a high correlation between the two but also revealed that cognitive strategies and social strategies could be the most possible predicators of L2 proficiency.
2.3.2 Vocabulary Proficiency and Vocabulary Learning Strategies
Strongly related to general English proficiency (Nation & Meara, 2002), vocabulary proficiency has been studied as a key variable in the choice of VLS since the late 1980s.
During the last two decades, studies have been carried out by many researchers, several of
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whose investigations involve English as a Second Language (ESL) or English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students (Ahmed, 1989; Gu & Johnson, 1996; Nassaji, 2006).
An early study was carried out by Ahmed (1989) to investigate 300 good and poor language learners from Sudan on the application of strategies into learning lexis. The results showed that more successful learners adequately employed more strategies in vocabulary learning. Besides, less successful learners were not as aware of the importance of VLS as those more advanced ones.
In the following decade, Gu and Johnson (1996) put their focus on the relationship between vocabulary size and the use of VLS. They expressed that the use of VLS is positively correlated to the learners’ English proficiency and vocabulary size after investigating 850 EFL college students in China. The results also showed that both
metacognitive strategies and cognitive strategies emerged positively correlated to vocabulary size. However, participants in their study did not rely on strategies concerning memorization skills as much as Asian students were expected to. Instead, they “reported using more
meaning-oriented strategies than rote strategies in learning vocabulary” (p. 668). In other words, the use of metacognitive and cognitive strategies varies among Chinese learners of different vocabulary sizes. Also, the findings that repetitive strategies were not frequently used by Chinese learners were in line with Fan’s (1999) study in Hong Kong, but in disagreement with other studies on Asian participants (Schmitt, 1997; Chen, 1998).
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More recently, Nassaji (2006) carried out another investigation in ESL contexts in Canada on the relationship between participants’ vocabulary knowledge, their use of inferencing strategy and the ability to guess meanings from the contexts. The results indicated that students with higher lexical knowledge employ VLS in a more frequent and efficient way. In other words, the larger word size language learners have, the more
frequently and successfully they apply VLS. The research findings agree with the results of the studies reviewed above (Ahmed, 1989; Gu & Johnson, 1996).
Besides studies on the relationship between vocabulary proficiency and the use of VLS, Jiménez Catalán (2003) suggests more research should be called to take another variable, gender differences, into consideration in the field of vocabulary acquisition. To trace back to all previous studies in history, gender differences have been widely studied in biological, psychological and sociological perspectives since early 1900s. In 1970s, SLA researchers started investigating the relationship between language and gender. A decade later, a time when LLS reached their maturity, researchers sought to find out how gender differences might affect the choice of language learning strategies. Among all the researchers, Oxford and her colleagues have devoted their efforts on the investigation into gender differences on the use of LLS.
2.3.3 Gender and Language Learning Strategies
Beginning a study on his Australian ESL students a year earlier before Oxford launched a series of investigations, Willing (1988) found gender differences on LLS but failed to
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“clearly separate[d] women from men on the basis of any underlying sensory preferences”
(Cited in Oxford, 1993, p. 549). Oxford and Nyikos (1989) next conducted a survey on 1200 university students and proved that gender differences did affect strategy use in a great deal.
They found that female students used a more and wider range of strategies than their male peers. At the same year, Oxford investigated gender as a variable with Ehrman and claimed strongly that in overall “[w]omen definitely report more use of strategies than men” (1989, p. 8). Besides conducting research on the topic, Oxford (1993) also reviewed the results of two former studies and concluded that female significantly had a greater use of cognitive strategies, social strategies and affective strategies than male, while no agreement was reached on whether significant differences existed or favored which sex in light of the use of memory strategies or meta-cognitive strategies.
Later, Green and Oxford (1995) also took a closer look at the relationship between gender, L2 proficiency and learning strategies in another study, including 374 college participants in Puerto Rico. The findings were consistent with those in the previous studies that women had a higher use of learning strategies than men on fourteen individual strategies, most of which were memory strategies, cognitive strategies and social strategies. On the contrary, men, compared with women, reported a greater use of watching TV or movies in English.
Moreover, Kaylani (1996) carried out another study in Jordan, focusing on the effect of gender differences and motivation on LLS use. The results of 255 Jordanese high school
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students showed that there were significant gender differences on the use of overall LLS. As for strategy categories, female students reported a significantly greater use of memory strategies, cognitive strategies and affective strategies. However, no significant gender differences were found on the use of meta-cognitive strategies and social strategies. She concluded several possible explanations for the results, some of which were different social status or career expectations of men and women, and the traditional culture of Muslim in Jordan.
The findings above contributed to searching the possible patterns of strategy use between male and female, consequently setting up models for subsequent researchers to further discuss VLS use with a gender perspective.
2.3.4 Gender and Vocabulary Learning Strategies
Gu (2002) studied the relationship between gender differences and VLS. A total number of 645 Chinese students from various academic majors in college participated in the
investigation of the use of VLS. The results showed that gender played a more important role than academic major. Besides, female students, who outperformed their male peers on the vocabulary tests, were found to use more metacognitive strategies and cognitive strategies significantly. Gu offered an explanation of the results with a Chinese social belief: Girls should do better than boys on language learning. To save their faces, female students spent more time studying English after school, therefore resulting with a more outstanding performance and a higher use of VLS by female participants.
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Later in Spain, Jiménez Catalán (2003) conducted a study of 581 college level
participants, focusing mainly on gender preferences on the use of VLS. Adopting Schmitt’s (1997) taxonomy, she suggested that female students adopted more discovery strategies and consolidating strategies than their male peers though both groups generally favored some same strategies, such as using a bilingual dictionary, using English-language media, and etc.
Given that gender differences on general strategy use, she explained the reason might be due to the higher motivation and the more positive attitude to excel on language learning by female learners than by male learners. Besides, she found out gender differences on memory strategy use might suggest different learning styles and learning preferences by male and female learners. Her findings corroborated with the results of some previous research (Reid, 1987; Oxford, 1994) that men tend to be visual and tactile style while women to be auditory style.
Though these studies above have concentrated on the effect of either vocabulary
proficiency or gender differences on the choice of VLS, it is unclear if the differences on the use of VLS were affected by both vocabulary proficiency and gender. In addition, as
Wharton’s (2000) and Olivares-Cuhat’s (2002) implications, students of various cultural backgrounds might have distinctive preference for strategies. Previous research findings might not be applicable to Taiwan’s EFL context, and accordingly, it seems necessary to look at the studies on VLS in Taiwanese context.
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