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Social strategy use and language learning contexts: A case study of Malayalee undergraduate students in India
This article reports on the social strategy use among India’s Malayalee undergraduate students across eight university colleges in one university in Kerala State. The investigation examines social strategy use in three main language learning contexts (in class, on campus outside the classroom, and o...
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| Format: | Printed Book |
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2014
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| Online Access: | http://10.26.1.76/ks/005624.pdf |
| Summary: | This article reports on the social strategy use among India’s Malayalee undergraduate
students across eight university colleges in one university in Kerala State. The investigation
examines social strategy use in three main language learning contexts (in class, on campus
outside the classroom, and off campus) and explores the topic from structuralist and so-
ciocultural perspectives. The study also investigates the interplay of stakeholders’ desires
and opportunities in conversational contexts, in which individuals and groups deployed
social strategies and yet experienced their sociocultural positions being challenged. Data
were collected through interviews and the Social Strategy Inventory for Language Learning
(SSILL), a questionnaire that was built on but expanded beyond the social strategies in
Oxford’s (1990) Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL). Results indicate that
although participating Malayalee undergraduate students seem highly motivated and
fairly cooperative, they settled for less than optimal use of interactive social strategies,
probably because their legitimate right to become proficient speakers of English continued
to be hampered by language education policies. The situation is far more pervasive than
what several previous studies of language learning strategies (LLS) had envisaged. These
findings imply that there is an urgent need to socialize and acculturate the less proficient
Malayalee students into English-speaking groups to make their transition from schools to
colleges smoother and to give them more autonomy. |
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| Physical Description: | p.64–73 43 (2014) |