IDENTIFICATION OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGIES USED BY BS ENGLISH MALE AND FEMALE STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SWAT

Abstract

This research work tried to find out the English language learning strategies used by the students of BS English at the University of Swat. The approach adopted was quantitive and an adopted questionnaire from the Oxford Study Inventory for Language Learner (1990) was administered to 100 participants for collecting the data. The data collected was analysed through SPSS. The findings of the study show that all the participants employed various types of strategies for learning English. The strategies identified were cognitive, affective, social and metacognitive in nature. However, the most frequently utilized strategy came out to be the memory strategy, whereas the least used strategy was identified to be the metacognitive strategy. However, with respect to gender, no significant differences were found between the male and female students in their use of different strategies. Apart from showing the types of strategies used by the BS English students of the University of Swat and the frequency of each method, the study suggests it to the academicians that males and females learn language in the same way and therefore both can be taught in the same way.

Keywords: English language learning strategies; strategy inventory for language learner (SILL); gender differences; memory strategy; metacognitive strategy.