Angeliki Psaltou-Joycey

Cross-Cultural Differences in the Use of Learning Strategies by Students of Greek as a Second Language

Abstract This paper discusses culture-specific learning strategies of 177 students learning Greek as a second/foreign language in an academic setting. The study reports on descriptive statistics of the data collected through implementation of the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) and processed in order to determine frequency of learners’ strategy use and the affect of variables on the choice of learning strategies. The results showed that of the independent variables of gender, age, language proficiency level and cultural background, the latter was the single most powerful variable that indicated significant differences in the choice of learning strategies. The paper also examines teacher preferences regarding preparation and presentation of teaching material, types of in-class and out-of-class activities, as well as teacher–student relations, in order to investigate how teaching practices and behaviours relate to learning strategies employed by students.

Plurilingualism, language learning strategy use and learning style preferences

Abstract The present paper investigates the language learning strategy use and learning style preferences of Greek university students in order to find out the possible relations that hold between degrees of plurilingualism, strategy use and learning styles. The subjects were 1555 Greek undergraduates from a number of disciplines, learning foreign languages in an academic context. They were classified as bilingual or trilingual students according to the language certificates they hold in any of the proficiency levels stated by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) for the languages taught in tertiary education in Greece (English, French, Italian, German and Spanish). The results of the study indicated that (a) trilingual students used more strategies more frequently than bilinguals, especially those that promote metalinguistic awareness; (b) more advanced trilinguals made more frequent use of strategies, which mainly came from the cognitive and metacognitive categories; and (c) trilingual students were significantly less concrete-sequential than bilinguals, irrespective of the level of proficiency in the target language of the latter.

Promotion of language learning strategies in the classroom: EFL teachers’ perceptions

ABSTRACT The present paper aims to shed some light on those EFL teachers’ language learning strategy instructional practices which facilitate their learners’ identification and selection of L2 learning strategies (LLS). To investigate the LLS which teachers promoted in mainstream and Muslim minority schools in Greece, we used data elicited through a 47 item specifically-designed questionnaire. Results showed the categories of strategies that are more or less frequently promoted by the research population. Differences in LLS promotion were identified between mainstream and minority school teachers; age and teaching experience influenced the promotion of certain strategy categories (i.e. metacognitive and compensation, respectively) but no differences were found between primary and secondary school teachers or between postgraduate qualification holders and non-holders.