Zoe Gavriilidou and Alexandros Papanis
Democritus University of Thrace

The purpose of the present study was to identify the range of strategies reported to be used by university students learning English as foreign language and to determine whether the reported strategies vary, depending on the proficiency in foreign language, gender, knowledge of more than one foreign language and career orientation of the students. 117 students filled in a questionnaire. The results showed that university students use learning strategies to a high degree. No significant effects of gender, career orientation and knowledge of more than one language was found. On the contrary, there was a significant effect of language proficiency on the use of metacognitive strategies.

Zoe Gavriilidou & Lydia Mitits
Democritus University of Thrace

The purpose of the study was to develop an adaptation protocol for Oxford‟s Strategy Inventory for Language learning (SILL) from English into Greek to be administered to monolingual/multilingual students aged 12-15 in secondary schools in Thrace, Greece. This study focuses on following the appropriate adaptation protocol in order to maximize the questionnaire reliability and validity, both when used with the particular learners and when used to compare scores across cultures and languages. The original scale was translated into Greek, back-translated and reviewed. Cross-cultural adaptation included the experts‟ revision, followed by the instrument administration to 50 participants. Its internal consistency was .91. Test-retest reliability ranged from fair to good for the total scale and its six-subscales.

Lydia Mitits and Zoe Gavriilidou
Democritus University of Thrace

Building upon previous research, the present large-scale study looks into the relationship between multilingualism and factors influencing language learning strategies by comparing 932 monolingual and 307 multilingual learners’ strategy use. The participants completed the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) Version 7.0 (Oxford 1990). The collected data were computed and analyzed via t-test, oneway and two-way ANOVA with respect to overall strategy use and the six categories by monolingual and multilingual learners and the independent variables. Interactions tested among the independent variables were not statistically significant pointing to the variables’ discreteness. However, the main effect of each independent variable, without the interference of the other variables, was statistically significant for certain strategy categories.

Lydia Mitits and Zoe Gavriilidou
Democritus University of Thrace

Zoe Gavriilidou* and Angeliki Psaltou-Joycey**
Democritus University of Thrace*,
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki**

The present article offers a brief overview of the field of language learning strategies by following the growth of relevant research over the past thirty years or so, which developed alongside the increased attention to learner-centred instructional models of foreign language teaching. As such, it highlights key concepts, relates the use of strategies to other learner variables, and touches on the issue of strategy instruction and its effect on language learning.

Zoe Gavriilidou and Alexandros Papanis
Democritus University of Thrace

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of strategy instruction on the use of strategies by Muslim primary school EFL learners, when they engage in reading and listening comprehension as well as vocabulary learning. 122 students attending minority schools in Xanthi and Rodopi, aged from 10 to 12 years old, participated in the study. They were divided into an experimental group who followed a specially designed programme aiming at raising learning strategy use, and a control group who followed only the typical English language programme. Strategy use in both groups was evaluated with a standardized questionnaire based on previous work by Oxford (1990) and O’ Malley and Chamot (1990), distributed before and immediately after the intervention programme. The results showed that the learning of the experimental group, compared to the control group, significantly improved because of an increased use of metacognitive, cognitive, and socio-affective strategies. These findings stress the need for designing special curricula for raising students’ strategic use of language in second or foreign language teaching.