Gerami, M. H., & Baighlou, S. M. (2011).

Language Learning Strategies Used by Successful and

Unsuccessful Iranian EFL Students. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 29, 1567-
1576. DOI:10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.11.399

This research examines the implementation of language learning strategies by successful

and unsuccessful Iranian EFL students. To do so, memory, cognitive, compensation,
metacognitive, affective, and social language learning strategies were investigated. To collect
data, the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL; Oxford, 1990) was administered to
successful and unsuccessful EFL students. The research questions of this study are : (1) What are
the most and least used categories of language learning strategies by Iranian successful and
unsuccessful EFL university students? And, (2) Are Iranian successful and unsuccessful EFL
university students high, medium, or low 'language learning strategy' users?

After they have answered the SILL questionnaire were involved 200 successful and
unsuccessful students out of the 388 and the descriptive statistics were used to investigate their
use of language strategies. They used metacognitive, compensation, social, memory, cognitive,
and affective strategies respectively. The mean of the most frequently used strategy,
metacognitive, is 4.16. And, the mean of the least frequently used strategy, affective, whereas,
the unsuccessful EFL students reported low use of strategy categories. It can seem that the
successful students used overall strategies significantly more frequently than the unsuccessful
students. The study also found that Iranian EFL students used affective strategies least
frequently.

This study has strengths such as advising students, and curriculum in the case of the
implications and benefits for an Iranian language teacher to raising their awareness and teacher
methodologies preferences. First, inform students of available strategies to help them in learning
the language. Second, the teachers have to pay attention to unsuccessful students. Third, a lack of
communication in the classroom would be a serious problem in teaching. Fourth, curriculum
developers should be modified. But also has the limitation, due to the successful and
unsuccessful students, the researcher did not show about their criteria.