| This survey study explores factors underlying strategy use, as measured by the SILL, of 911 students learning beginning level Chinese, French, German, Russian, and Spanish at The University of Texas at Austin. This study also investigates the possibility of predicting strategy factors from learner-related variables. Preliminary analyses based on correlations, means, standard deviations, MANOVA, ANOVA, Tukey's HSD, and factor congruence necessitate separate analyses by language groups. Preliminary analyses also indicate that the five correlation matrices are significantly different from identity matrices. However, the Russian group, with a low overall MSA, was dropped from further analyses.;Five factors are suggested to represent each of the language groups, based on scree test, Kaiser's rule, Bartlett's chi-square, residual correlations, and interpretability of factors. These orthogonally transformed factors are interpreted as: (1) cognitive (CF1), communication-oriented (CF2), social (CF3), affective-metacognitive (CF4), and memory-metacognitive (CF5) strategies for the Chinese group, (2) general (FF1), metacognitive (FF2), social (FF3), memory (FF4), and compensatory (FF5) strategies for the French group, (3) functional-metacognitive (GF1), formal practice (GF2), planning and repetition (GF3), social (GF4), and memory-affective (GF5) strategies for the German group, and (4) functional (SF1), metacognitive (SF2), organizational (SF3), input-elicitation (SF4), and memory (SF5) strategies for the Spanish group. These results question, though partially, the SILL as a measure of language learning strategies in terms of its utility to provide an unambiguous interpretation of strategies based on its six subscales.;Findings from regression analysis involving model selection, diagnostic procedures, and cross-validation indicate that ambiguity tolerance is a significant and positive predictor of SF1, but a negative predictor of CF3 and SF3; language anxiety, a negative predictor of CF2 and FF1; majors in social sciences, a positive predictor of SF1; amount of contact with native speakers, a positive predictor of FF1, FF3, GF4, and SF1; course status, a positive predictor of FF3, but a negative predictor of GF3 and SF1; hours per week spent in studying the language, a positive predictor of FF2, FF3, GF3, and SF3; motivation in the classroom, a positive predictor of GF3 and SF3; motivation outside the classroom, a positive predictor of CF2, FF1, and SF1; prior language experience, a positive predictor of CF2; self-perceived proficiency, a positive predictor of FF1 and FF2; and gender, a positive predictor of FF1 and FF2, but a negative predictor of SF3, GF3, and GF4. |
