LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGY OF STUDENTS IN INTENSIVE ENGLISH LANGUAGE INSTITUTE ( IELI )

This study aims to examine the influence of gender and nationality on the use of language learning strategies. The population of this study was the students who enrolled and studied in IELI of Flinders University and 34 students became the convenience samples. Strategy Inventory for Language Learner (SILL) questionnaire version 7.0 developed by Oxford (1990) was used as the main instrument of the research. The data analysis in this research used quantitative approach with Cronbach’s α for measuring item reliability, descriptive statistics for demographic data and Independent-Samples T-test for gender differences, and analysis of variance (ANOVA) for nationality differences. The results showed that gender and nationality has had an insignificant effect in the use of language learning strategies.


INTRODUCTION
Learning is fundamental to human nature, along with the need to keep developing and improving.One indication of learning is change in behavior resulting from gain in knowledge, skills and attitudes.However, to be successful in learning, capacity to learn and intelligence are not the only influencing factors.
There are many others factors that can influence success in learning such as educational background, motivation, and strategies, among others.Using Marina Englisia Vol. 4, No. 2, MAY 2017 | 67 appropriate learning strategies is one factor that can facilitate learning, making the process easier, more pleasant, organized and effective.Oxford (1990, p. 8) defines learning strategy as "…specific actions taken by the learner to make learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective, and more transferrable to new situations".Therefore, to be successful in learning, it is important to use the most effective strategies to gain knowledge and skills.
In language learning, the use of strategies need to be taken into account since many studies have found that success in language learning is associated with the use of strategies (Green & Oxford, 1995;Hong-Nam & Leavell, 2006;Park, 1997).Those studies point out that the more strategies a language learner uses the more successful he or she could be at acquiring the language.However, choices of preferred strategies might be different among language learners and might depend on the context within and externally to the learners themselves.Factors such as gender and nationality might influence the choice of strategy used by learners as suggested by some studies (Aliakbari & Hayatzadeh, 2008;Green & Oxford, 1995;Hong-Nam & Leavell, 2006, 2007).

LITERATURE REVIEW Language Learning Strategies
It is important to emphasise the meaning of language learning strategies to give a standard in measuring the use of language learning strategies in this study.
The definition of learning strategies or language learning strategies differs across many experts in education and language teaching.Weinstein and Mayer (1986, p. 315) considered learning strategies broadly as "behaviors and thoughts that a learner engages in during learning".According to Stern (1992), learning strategy concept depends on the theory that learners intentionally take on in activities to accomplish certain purposes and learning strategies can be regarded as broadly conceived intentional directions and learning techniques.However, those definitions lead to one point, which is how a learner tries to achieve information by using some ways during learning process.Specifically in learning language, Tarone (1983) defines it as attempts a learner tries to do to develop linguistics and sociolinguistic skills in learning a certain language.Therefore, language learners usually use several ways or strategies to improve their language skill.

Classification of Language Learning Strategies
This study used a questionnaire developed by Oxford called Strategy Inventory for Language Learner (SILL).In SILL, Oxford (1990) classifies language learning strategies into six parts: memory, cognitive, compensation, metacognitive, affective, and social.SILL consists of six dimensions of learning.The first part, memory, is something that is remembered in order to store and retrieve information.
Cognitive is a psychological result of perception and learning, reasoning and thinking in order to understand and produce the language.Compensation is a defense mechanism that conceals undesirable shortcomings by exaggerating desirable behaviors in order to overcome limitations in language learning.Metacognitive can be defined as "above the cognition" used to plan and monitor learning.Affective is characterised by emotion and used to control emotions and motivation.Social is defined by friendly companionship with others used in order to cooperate with others in language learning Stern (1992), however, states that there are five main language learning strategies: management and planning strategies, cognitive strategies, communicative -experiential strategies, interpersonal strategies and affective strategies.Even though the two classifications by Stern and Oxford seem different, their dimensions are similar upon closer examination of each strategy.

Factors in Language Learning Use
Language learning strategies is a broad topic that can include all types of a variety of ways in obtaining knowledge and information.It is important, therefore, that a teacher should be aware that students might have different learning strategies that are influenced by background differences.As Hong-Nam and Leavall (2006) state in their article, when the teacher interacts with students from different social and culture, they must assume that there are differences in thinking and behaviours of their students.This understanding will facilitate the respective learning process and will benefit both teacher and students.However, this study focuses only on gender and nationality differences.Several studies have found that cultural background and nationality are some of the factors that influence language learning strategy use (Aliakbari & Hayatzadeh, 2008;Hong-Nam and Leavall, 2007;Mochizuki, 1999).Students from different countries supposed to have different cultures and languages as well.These culture differences might affect their preference in learning new language such as English.Some studies that focus on the correlation between the use of language learning strategy and nationality and culture have found that there are differences in using strategies among nationalities (Hong-Nam & Leavell, 2006;Oxford & Burry-Stock, 1995;Wharton, 2000).
The possibility of gender influencing learning strategy use has been reported in several studies.In general, those studies report that females are considered to use more strategies than males (Hong-Nam & Leavell, 2006;Oxford & Nyikos, 1989).
This might be moderated by the context or culture of language learning (Hong-Nam & Leavell, 2006).

METHOD Purposes and research questions
This study concerns on the use of language learning strategies.The purposes of the study are to investigate the main language learning strategies used by Intensive English Language Institute (IELI) students of Flinders University and to investigate any differences in the use of the strategies by gender and nationality.The study examines two questions related to the dependent variable (strategies used) and independent variables (gender and nationality).To make clear the issue at hand, the statement of problem is formulated in the form of two research questions.
a. What are the language learning strategies used by students at IELI? b.Are there differences in the use of language learning strategies because of gender or nationality?Participants A convenience sample of 34 former IELI students participated in language learning strategy survey by using questionnaire based on a modification of the Strategy Inventory for Language Learner (SILL) questionnaire version 7.0 developed by Oxford (1990).The students involved in this study were either studying or had completed level 5 and 6 at IELI during the time of research period.Based on the demographic questionnaire, all 34 participants (11 males and 23 females) aged between 18-45 years (18-25 years = 18 people, 26-35 years = 14 people and 35-45 years = 2 people).Participants were recruited through telephone and email.Stock, 1995;Park, 1997).A Cronbach's α calculated in this study also revealed an acceptable reliability (.91).Therefore, SILL is considered as a trusted questionnaire for determining language learning strategies.
In measuring language learning strategies, SILL divides the items in six sections.The brief details of SILL are given in Table 1.Once completed, the SILL data can be analyzed by using a reporting scale developed by Oxford (1990) to provide information to teachers and students about which group of strategies they use the most in learning English.The scale is (1) "High Usage" (3.5-5.0), ( 2) "Medium Usage" (2.5-3.4) and ( 3) "Low Usage" (1.0-2.4).For the demographic data, the questionnaire requested information about gender, nationality and home language(s).The complete questionnaire was distributed online through Survey Gizmo.The invitation of joining the survey was sent through their emails and Social Network such as Facebook.

Item Reliability
Cronbach's α coefficient was computed to determine an internal consistency reliability of the SILL (50 items) for each group.The reliability of SILL for IELI students was .91 on 34 cases.The high α indicated that the students' responses to the items in SILL were relatively consistent.According to Pallant (2007), an acceptable alpha level is above .7 but values above .8are preferable.
For item reliability, some items have "Cronbach's α if item deleted" higher than the final alpha value (.91).These items are considered to be removed from the scale; however, for an established, well-validated scales, the items are removed only if the alpha value was low or less than .7 (Pallant, 2007).Since the Cronbach's α of SILL in this study was higher than .7,these items were not removed.The table 3 shows the items that have higher "Cronbach's α if item deleted".wrong answers and their answers would be kept confidential as well as their responses would be used for research purposes only.They were also informed that they had the right to withdraw from the survey anytime.
Data analysis included the use of statistical methods consisting of descriptive statistics (means, standard deviation and frequencies and percentages) to compile information about the demography of the participants and to calculate overall strategy use.Cronbach's α was used to test the level of internal consistency within the questionnaire.To investigate gender differences in the frequency of language learning strategy use, Independent-Samples T-test was used because gender has two groups (male and female).According to Pallant (2007, p. 232), "an independentsamples t-test is used to compare the mean score, on some continuous variables, for two different groups of subjects".To determine any variation in strategy use because of nationality differences, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted because nationality has more than two groups.Pallant (2007) states in her book that analysis of variance (ANOVA) is used in comparing the mean scores of more than two groups.The six categories of language learning strategies in the questionnaire are considered as dependent variables while nationality and gender as independent variables.All data analysis utilized the SPSS package version 17.0.

Overall Strategy Use
The overall use of strategies by participants is presented in Table 2.The most preferred group of the six strategy categories were social strategies (M = 3.90) followed by metacognitive strategies (M = 3.75), cognitive strategies (M = 3.55), and compensation strategies (M = 3.53).The least preferred strategies were memory (M = 3.00) and affective (M = 3.25).The finding of the least favored strategies of memory and affective was similar to several studies about language learning strategies (Hashim & Sahil, 1994;Hong-Nam & Leavell, 2006).The mean scores of all items in six categories of SILL are reported in Table 5.All mean fell between 4.35 and 2.03 on a scale of 1 to 5.
According to Table 5, metacognitive strategy item "I pay attention when someone is speaking English" (M = 4.35) was the most frequently used strategy for the participants, and memory strategy item "I use flashcards to remember new English words" was the least frequently used strategy

Differences in Strategies Use because of Gender
Table 6 shows the t-test results to determine any significant differences in the use of language learning strategies because of gender.There were no significant differences in scores for males and females in Memory, Cognitive, Compensation, Affective or Social categories of language learning strategies because the value of Sig.(2-tailed) was above .05.Therefore, there was no statistically significant difference in the mean language learning strategies scores for males and females.

CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS
IELI course is an important part for international students to prepare themselves to study in English speaking university although not all IELI students intend to continue to university.In other words, some students just want to learn or Marina to improve English in IELI.The review of literature suggests that there is little research focusing on language learning strategies in English program in the university context.
Moreover, no research was located specifically regarding language learning strategies in IELI.This study has benefit for English language teachers and learners and for IELI administrators, in particular, to inform and provide information regarding language learning strategy use.
This study experienced limitations in terms of its process of answering questionnaire since the samples of this study came from many different countries and the questionnaire was presented in English.Furthermore, some participants were still studying English and had lower proficiency.This led to limitation in answering the questions because of language barrier.It was difficult for the researcher to translate the questionnaire in each home language of each participant since they came from many countries with different languages.The researcher minimized this limitation by introducing several difficult terms in the questionnaire to the participants before distributing it.Another limitation was the number of participants that was quite small (n = 34) to have a good statistical analysis.Therefore, the results of this survey cannot be generalized.Further research with an appropriate number of sample would be needed to give a clearer description of language learning strategies used by IELI students.

TABLE 1 .
Demographic Description of Participants The level will only be decided based upon the result of the placement test.Students who have completed the six levels are eligible to study at Flinders University.In other words, they have met the necessary (Hong-Nam & Leavell, 2007;Oxford & Burry-I) is a not-for-profit educational association located on the campus of Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia.IELI offers six levels of English ranging from the beginning level to the Academic Proficiency level.It provides many English learning programs, which can be chosen by students based on their need, such as General English, Academic Preparation, English for Business and IT and English for Medical and Nursing.In general, IELI students undertake fulltime study.In one day, there are three classes which include Communication, Reading and Writing and Listening Class.In each class, there are only a maximum of 10 students.IELI offers 6 levels of English from beginning to Academic Proficiency.Students undertake a placement test before starting study at IELI.The placement test includes a reading and writing test, listening test and communication test.Any TOEFL, IELTS or English language certificate cannot be Marina Englisia Vol. 4, No. 2, MAY 2017 | 71 used to determine placement certain level.true of me" (5).The SILL is widely used as a key instrument in research with good reliability ranging from .85 to .98(Hong-Nam& Leavell, 2007;Oxford & Burry-

TABLE 2 .
Strategies, Number of Items within Each Section, and One Sample Item for Each Section.

TABLE 3 .
SILL Items that Have Higher Cronbach's Alpha if Item Deleted were given in the introductory email, which was sent to their private emails and social network such as Facebook.The students were told that there were no right or Marina Englisia Vol. 4, No. 2, MAY 2017 | 73

TABLE 4 .
Descriptive Statistics for the Variables of the Six Strategy Categories

TABLE 6
Table1, the majority of the participants were from Indonesia, Japan and Saudi Arabia.Since come nationalities had very low representation, certain subgroups were combined in order to evaluate statistically possible differences in strategy use nationality.China and Taiwan have a similar language; therefore, they were combined in one group.The remaining participants were combined in one group as "Others" since the number of participant in each group was small.A one-way between-group analysis of variance was conducted to explore the impact of nationality on the use language learning strategies.Subjects were divided into six groups of nationalities.There was no statistically significant difference since the value of Sig. of each variable above .05.Therefore, based on the ANOVA, the different nationalities did not have an impact in language learning strategy used by IELI students.The complete detail of ANOVA is presented in Table7.

TABLE 7 .
Summary of Variation in Use of Strategy Categories by Nationality