Thai and Vietnamese university students' language learning strategies

Abstract

To investigate language learning strategies used by Thai and Vietnmese university students, to compare the use of the strategies by the two groups of students, and to study the influence of gender, motivation, and experience in studying English on their choice of the language learning strategies. The participants are 84 Thai and 52 Vietnamese first or second-year students at Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, and The University of Social Science and Humanities, Hanoi, Vietnam. The Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) developed by Oxford (1990) and semi-structured interviews are used as research instruments. Descriptive and inferential statistics are used to determine the rank of the strategies chosen and the relationship between the three variables and the choices of language learning strategies. The results of the analysis reveal that Thai students used compensation most, followed by cognitive, metacognitive, social, affective and memory strategy categories, respectively. As for Vietnamese students, the most frequently used strategy category is compensation, followed by social, metacognitive, affective, cognitive, and memory categories. The similarity of these two groups of students is that they use compensation category most, and memory category least. Concerning individual strategy, it is found that Thai students tend to guess meanings of unfamiliar words, use circumlocutions or synonyms, use glossaries or dictionaries, whereas Vietnamese students tend to encourage themselves to try harder, and pay attention when someone is speaking. The study also shows that motivation is the most significant factor factor affecting the choice of the strategies, followed by experience in studying English. Gender is the least significant factor. Furthermore, the analysis also shows that lowly-motivated and inexperienced Thai female students tend to use the six strategy categories less than their Vietnamese counterparts. The results of the study are useful particularly to educational planners, methodologists, and classroom teachers; they not only help them understand the strategies used by Thai students in learning English better, but also facilitate the process of improving English education in Thailand.