CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION
A. Background
English is the world's primary language used in diplomacy, education, business,
economics, politics, social and culture. Lots of information in English today. English in
Indonesia is a foreign language that almost everyone learns to grow up like other countries.
Many schools in Indonesia make English a compulsory subject for them in junior high and
high school, such as at the school where I did Introduction to the School Environment (PLP)
English is a compulsory subject like in other schools.
English is an international language used by people almost all over the world.
Richards and Rodgers (2001:3) state that currently English is the most widely studied foreign
language in the world. However, in Indonesia, English is only known as the first foreign
language whose use is very limited covering place, time, and environment. There are many
ways and factors to improve English skills and it depends on the student. Each student has
their own way of thinking, accepting what they get, processing what they receive. The
student environment also has an impact on students getting information.
Learning strategies are specific action taken by the learners to enhance their own
learning. It means that appropriate learning strategies can make the learners learn easier,
faster, more enjoyable, more effective, and more transferrable to a new situation. Wenden
and Rubin (1987) define learning strategies as "any sets of operations, steps, plans, routines
used by the learner to facilitate the obtaining, storage, retrieval, and use of information." it
means that learning strategies are some ways to do to catch the information from others. It
can be some steps, it can be a planning or it can be a daily activity. Not too different with
O'Malley and Chamot (1990:1) who illustrate learning strategies as "special thoughts or
behaviors that individuals use to help them comprehend, learn, or retain new information."
O’Malley and Chamot just use "special thoughts or behavior" to draw a way that the learners
will do in order to get the information, where Wenden and Rubin are prefer to draw it in
details. But both of them have the same purpose to be caught, which is to get the information.
Oxford (1990:1) defines language learning strategies as "specific actions taken by the learner
to make learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective, and more
transferrable to new situations." It is in line with what Cohen said before. However, it
emphasizes more on the action that the learners may choose. It also may depend on the
learners' age, learning style, gender, background knowledge, etc.
 The successful learning process is not only by the good learning strategies and
methods also depends on students' thinking styles. The correct students thinking styles make
an impact for the learning process. There are good and bad factors that influenced Students
learning in the class. Nyikos and Oxford (1993: 11) state that even with the best teachers and
methods, students are the only ones who can actually do the learning. From the problems
above the researcher knows that the factors that influenced the learning process depends on
how is the students thinking styles. Dweck (2006) say that there are 2 kinds of approach in
students thinking styles; they are fixed mindset and growth mindset. In a fixed mindset,
students always feels anxious and nervous to setbacks or criticisms. Students with growth
mindset feels eager to learn to boost her performance and enjoy exploring, experimenting and
stretching themself. Students have a minds which is branched, and it called as their brain is
started to grow up but still not maximal. Usually students learn more to get new information,
science and from this process students can develop their brain again. Students who can focus
on the learning process usually they can get much information from the learner.
In this study, the researcher wanted to find out a significant relationship between
language learning strategies and students' thinking styles by distributing questionnaires to
students as participants in this study, especially for the English education department.
Therefore, the researcher predicts that sharing the questionnaire can be useful to know the
results. Based on the arguments that have been discussed, the researcher argues that it is
necessary to observe and focus on language learning strategies and students' thinking styles.
Therefore, the researcher chose the title "The Relationship of Language Learning Strategies
with Students' Thinking Styles"

B. Research problem
Based on the phenomenon of study, in order to learn more obvious and more directed
the researcher formulates the problems of the study as follows:
1. How is the Profile of Language Learning Strategies?
2. How is the Profile of Students Thinking Styles?
3. Is there any significant correlation between language learning strategy and students
thinking styles?
C. Objective of the Research
Responding with the statement of the problems, the objectives of the research
are stated as follows:
1. To find out the Profile of Language Learning Strategies.
2. To find out the Profile of Students' Thinking Styles.
3. The significant correlation between language learning strategy and student's
thinking styles