Relationships between motivation/attitude, effort, English proficiency, and socio-cultural educational factors and Taiwan technological university/institute students' English learning strategy use (China)

In this study, the researcher used a bi-method approach consisting of a survey and qualitative interviews to investigate English learning strategies employed by Taiwan technological university/institute students and factors affecting their strategy use, including motivation/attitude, effort, English proficiency, and socio-cultural educational factors. The researcher surveyed 372 two-year program juniors (341 males and 31 females) in a national university of technology, using a purpose-designed questionnaire consisting of two sections: Section 1, questions adapted from the Attitude/Motivation Test Battery designed by Gardner and Lambert (1985); and Section 2, Oxford's (1989) 50-item Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) with some items being replaced with items derived from Oxford's (1989) 80-item SILL. Multiple regression analyses indicated that motivation/attitude, effort, and English proficiency in combination predicted or explained 47% of variance in memory strategy use, 60% of variance in cognitive strategy use, and 29.4% of variance in compensation strategy use (p {dollar}<{dollar}.001); and that motivation/attitude and effort in combination predicted or accounted for 54% of variance in metacognitive strategy use, 38% of variance in affective strategy use, and 30% of variance in social strategy use (p {dollar}<{dollar}.001). MANOVAs with follow-up ANOVAs revealed significant differences between proficient learners (n = 86) and non-proficient learners (n = 87) in their using all six learning strategy categories (p =.001 for affective strategy groups and p {dollar}<{dollar}.001 for the other groups) and 32 individual learning strategies on the SILL (p {dollar}<{dollar}.001).; The researcher also interviewed thirteen proficient EFL learners in two-year programs and seven proficient EFL learners in four-year programs at the university where the survey was conducted. The interviews were conducted in Chinese; taped interviews were translated into readable English texts; and participants' responses were analyzed using data analysis methods recommended by Miles and Huberman (1994) and Rubin and Rubin (1995). The results of qualitative interviews clearly linked reading, writing, and communication strategies to socio-cultural educational factors.; The researcher recommends that to develop students in Taiwan into motivated, reflective, autonomous, strategic learners, their teachers should integrate learning strategy instruction into communicative-oriented curricula and make necessary instructional adaptations after considering students' characteristics and students' classroom culture.