Arab Educational Information Network

This research aims to explore language learning strategies used by language learners to learn English and the effect of the English language study duration. The research answers the call for replication of language strategy research in different cultural contexts. A total of 86 final year intermediate school students in a public school in Saudi Arabia, completed an adapted version of Oxford’s (1990) language learning strategy inventory SILL version 7.0. The adapted version of SILL had Cronbach’s alpha of (0.936) and the overall Crobach’s alph had (0.966). The results show that students used a number of learning strategies and their use of these strategies was overall moderate. Metacognitive, social and compensation strategies were reported to be the most frequently used strategies while cognitive and memory strategies were the least used. Moreover, no significant difference was found in relation to duration of studying English. Although negative significant relation was reported between students compensation strategies and duration of their language study as students’ use of compensation strategies decreased with the increase of study duration. English language teaching and learning in Saudi Arabia might benefit from the results of this study. Finally, recommendations were discussed. (Published abstract)