Strategic Language Learning

The Roles of Agency and Context

By (author) Dr. Xuesong (Andy) Gao

Publication date:

19 February 2010

Publisher

Multilingual Matters

Dimensions:

210x148mm
6x8"

ISBN-13: 9781847692443

This monograph reports on a longitudinal inquiry into mainland Chinese undergraduates’ language learning experiences in an English medium university in a multilingual setting with a focus on their strategic language learning efforts. This book examines the issue as to what extent language learners’ strategic learning efforts depend on their ‘choice’, if ‘the element of choice’ is the defining characteristic of language learners’ strategic learning behaviour. The inquiry, using a qualitative and ethnographic research approach, reveals dynamic interaction between learners’ agency and contextual conditions underlying the participants’ strategic learning process. Such understanding informs pedagogical efforts to foster individual learners’ capacity for strategic learning and their capacities in opening up and sustaining a social learning space for exercising their strategic learning capacity or utilizing their strategic learning knowledge.

Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 A Sociocultural Perspective on Strategic Learning
Chapter 3 Mainland Chinese Students’ Migration to Hong Kong
Chapter 4 On the Chinese Mainland
Chapter 5 Learning English in Hong Kong
Chapter 6 Four Case Studies
Chapter 7 Agency and Context in Strategic Learning

In this engaging study combining both quantitative and qualitative approaches, Gao makes extensive use of a sociocultural research perspective to investigate second-language learner strategies. With theoretically-grounded rigor, he demonstrates how contextual realities (such as the threat of a given exam) mediate the language learning and use strategies of college students. A highlight of the study is his comparison of the same learners’ strategies and discourse about their experiences in studying in mainland China and then at an English-medium university in Hong Kong. What lends credibility to the study is that the author himself experienced challenges similar to those of his subjects, and that he was a participant observer by rooming for a year in a student dorm with one of his subjects.