Exploring language learning strategies used by Japanese junior high school students of EFL :A qualitative approach

摘要

This study examined how Japanese junior high school students learn English as a foreign language(EFL) inside and outside the classroom. The participants were 347 junior high school students of EFL and twenty-three English teachers at junior high schools. Open-ended and multiple-choice questionnaires were administered to examine students' strategy use as well as teachers' perceptions of their students' use. In the open-ended questionnaire, the students described their stratigies and the teachers described the strategies which they throught thier students had used in terms of each skill area, e.g., vocabulary, listening, and speking. The multiple-choice questionnaire examined students' metacognitive strategy use. An analysis of the descriptions in the open-ended questionnaire was carried out using the KJ method. The results showd that: 1) the sutdents seemd to rely primarily on cognitive strategies, though not in an orchestrated way; 2) the number of vocabulary-learning strategies used was the highest of all the skill-specific strategies; 3) different patterns of skill-specific strategy use were identified in relation to the different settings, i.e., inside or outside the classroom; and 4) the teachers' perceptions of their learners' strategy use were somewhat different from the students' self-reports in terms of the types and the patterns of strategy use. Finally, some implications of developing a standardized multipile-choice strategy questionnaire to investigate strategy use by Japanese junior high shool students are discussed.