The Impact of Strategy Based İnstruction on İmproving the Foreign Language Proficiency Level of the 3rd Grade Students at the Turkish Military Academy

Abstract

This study aims to find out the impact of the Strategy Based Instruction on improving the Foreign Language Proficiency Level of the students at the Turkish Military Academy. The study was applied to 55 3rd grade male cadets in the 2011 ? 2012 academic year in a 10-week period. The study was conducted during the first semester of the 2011 ? 2012 academic year. The participants of the study are military high school graduates and have been studying English for nearly seven years. As the data collection instrument, a foreign language learning strategies use questionnaire adapted from Oxford?s (1990) Strategies Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) was adapted and used. The inventory consists of six main parts and consisting of questions aiming to collect data on how the learners use various language learning strategies to learn a foreign language. At the beginning of the study, the control (N=27) and experimental group (N=28) students were given a paper and pencil TOEFL test covering listening, structure and written expression and reading sections. At the end of the 10-week strategy based instruction, the control and experimental group students were given a pre-test like TOEFL exam as a post-test to assess the likely impact of Strategy Based Instruction on the English proficiency level of the participants. The collected data was analyzed by using SPSS 15.0 statistical package. Frequency, mean, independent t-test, paired samples t-test and Pearson Correlation analyses were used to analyze the data obtained. Based on the research findings, the Military Academy cadets use the compensation strategies the most and the social strategies the least. In addition to this, there is no statistically significant relationship between the use of foreign language learning strategies and overall foreign language proficiency in general and listening, writing and reading proficiency in specific. However, the use of memory and compensation strategies made a statistically significant difference on overall foreign language proficiency. Regarding this, students having lower grades are likely to use more memory strategies, whereas students with higher grades are found to use the compensation strategies more frequently. Finally, the Strategy Based Instruction is found to cause no statistically significant difference on the frequency of the participants? use of the foreign language learning strategies.