Chinese undergraduate students’ language learning strategy use in flipped English learning and its relationships to gender and proficiency

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine Chinese undergraduate students’ language learning strategy use in flipped English learning and the effect of gender and language proficiency on strategy use. It aimed to enrich the research on language learning strategies as well as the flipped classroom and render implications to EFL instructors on developing students’ language learning strategy use in flipped English learning. Research questions in this study revolved around identifying the most and least frequently used language learning strategies in Chinese undergraduate students’ flipped English learning, and the influence of gender as well as language proficiency on the frequency of students’ strategy use. In this study, the researchers employed random sampling to select 109 students enrolled in the flipped English course for non-English majors at H University in China. Oxford’s (1990) Strategies Inventory of Language Learning (SILL) was modified for a flipped classroom context and employed to collect data. T-tests and ANOVAs were used to analyze the data. The results revealed that participants employed language learning strategies with medium frequency in flipped English learning. While they employed social strategies the most frequently, they used metacognitive strategies the least frequently. Furthermore, the male and female participants were not significantly different in their strategy use. However, there was a significant difference in strategy use in relation to English language proficiency in that high proficiency students employed strategies more frequently than low proficiency students. Pedagogical implications are provided.