Direct Language Learning Strategies in EFL

This present study was designed to investigate the impact of using direct language learning strategies on long term and short term (LT and ST for short) of vocabulary retention of non-specialist EFL learners in Iraq. A total of 60 Iraqi male non-specialist EFL learner’s college between the ages of 19 and 21participated in the study. The data were collected using a questionnaire (five-point rating) from Oxford’s (1990) the Strategy Inventory for the Language Learning (SILL for short / version7). To identify the strategies used, the information gathered was analyzed using descriptive statistics of means, frequency and standard deviation. In direct language learning strategies (DLLS for short) study, the (t-test) has been used to examine the learners ' performance of vocabulary retention in LT and ST. On the other hand, One-way between groups (ANOVA) with posthoc comparison test was used to investigate the differences between LT and ST of the vocabulary retention by using the subcategories of direct language learning strategies. The outcomes showed that the learners’ strategy uses ST more out weights than LT of vocabulary retention. According to the outcomes, the most used (in both long term and short term) was (memory) strategies and followed by (compensation and cognitive) strategies. In the light of the results obtained, a number of pedagogical implications and suggestions were presented.


Introduction
Over the last twenty-five years, Strategies for language acquisition play an significant role in acquiring the second and/or foreign languages and the emphasis has shifted from the teacher to the learner (e.g., Chamot & kupper 1989;Lessard-Clouston 1997;Lee 1994;Oxford 1993). Language learning strategies studies have continued the "good language learner" strategies by Rubin (1975) and Stern (1975). Rubin (1975) indicates that "Good language learners are willing and accurate guessers; have a strong drive to communicate; are often uninhibited; are willing to make mistakes; focus on form by looking for patterns and analyzing; take advantage of all practice opportunities; monitor their speech as well as that of others; and pay attention to meaning" (p. 43).
Learning strategies are any set of plans, specific activities, techniques, habits, ideas or behaviors applied by the learners to facilitate the understanding, acquisition, receiving and use of knowledge (Rubin, 1987;O'Malley and Chamot, 1990). Therefore, it is aim-oriented to employ strategies of any sort. In order to know and use language, Language learning strategies dealing with learners' mental and communicative procedures apply (Phillips, 1991). Some strategies employ individually; whereas others will contain the participant of other people. Additionally, most educators begin to understand the effect that learning strategies can have on second and/or foreign language (Chamot, 2005;O'Malley & Chamot, 1985;Dansereau, 1985).

The Problem and Its Significance
Learning English as a foreign Language constitutes a critical role in Iraq intermediate, secondary and college curricula. Indeed, in the nonspecialist colleges EFL learning, and furthermore l, English class includes only one to two hours a week. Practically speaking, they have some obstacles on the way to learning English, some of them, most students are not trained to reach the preferred level of English skills; they lose self-confidence in their English proficiency. Therefore, the colleges have embraced the requirements that their graduates must exhibit English proficiency in order to improve student English proficiency. Appropriately, how to help the English language learning undergraduates has become a major issue. Along these lines, the researchers hope that a strategy for language learning plays a critical role in L2 / FL learning. In addition, for Iraq University students, this issue has never been surveyed. Knowing the students' needs and attempting to be acknowledged by them may help create a sincerely positive and academically beneficial environment in the classroom. Also, the researchers hope that the insights into Iraq's non-specialist colleges of English learning strategies used by EFL learners will provide experts and instructors with information on how to help students use language learning strategies.

Aims of the Study
The aims of this present study are: 1. To identify the frequency of direct language learning strategies used by non-specialist EFL male learners. 2. To investigate the impact of using direct language learning strategies and subcategories on LT and ST of vocabulary retention by nonspecialist EFL male learners.

Research Questions
This study attempts to answer the following questions: 1. What are the most frequently used direct strategies of language learning by learners? 2. Does direct strategies of language learning influence on nonspecialist EFL male learners' retention of vocabulary (LT and ST)? 3. Does direct subcategories strategies of language learning influence on non-specialist EFL male learners' retention of vocabulary (LT and ST)?

2. Literature review 2.1 Direct Language learning strategies
There are various definitions of language learning strategies given by various researchers and scholars. One of them, Oxford (1989) defines language learning strategies as explicit actions made by the students to make learning simpler, quicker, more enjoyable, more productive and more transferable to a new situation. Schemeck (1988) indicated that "Strategy is the implementation of a set of procedures (tactics) for accomplishing something and learning strategy is a sequence of procedures for accomplishing learning" (p.5). Chamot (1987) maintains that "Learning strategies are techniques that students take in order to facilitate the learning and recall of both linguistic and content area information" (p.71). Rubin (1981) stated that "Language learning strategies include any set of operations, steps, plans, routines used by the learner to facilitate the obtaining, storage, retrieval and use of information" (p.19).
Learning strategies are thought that students have and action that they can take to help their obtaining, remember new information, production, and management of their language learning (Chamot, 1998;Schumaker, 1984).
According to definition of scholars and researchers, main characteristics of language learning strategy can be summarized as follower: 1. allow students to become more self-coordinated. Like the definitions, there are also various attempts to classify language learning strategies (e. g. stern, 1992; Chamot and O'Malley1990; Oxford, 1990). See figure (1) for more illustrates.

Figure (1): classify language learning strategies
According to Ellis (1994: 539), the Oxford taxonomy strategies of language learning is "the most comprehensive classification to date". Strategy divides into two type categories: direct and indirect. Direct strategies mean (working with the language itself (with target language) and consist of strategies for memory, cognitive, and compensation. In comparison, indirect strategies mean (general management of learning (without target language) and consist of strategies for metacognitive, affective, and social (Beck, 2001). See figure (2) for more illustrates.

Figure (2):
Oxford's taxonomy of language learning strategies Oxford (1991:37) summarized direct language learning strategies as follows: 1. Memory strategies: are those used fame storage and retrieve aspects of the target language, such as images, structure reviewing, applying sound, using mechanical techniques. 2. Cognitive strategies: are used by learner to produce new language and to understand how it works, such as practicing and receiving and sending messages, analyzing, highlighting, summarizing, translating. 3. Compensation strategies: help learners to use language despite gaps in knowledge, such as guessing at words based on context, using gestures and limitations in speaking and writing.

Methodology 3.1. Participants
The participants of the present research were (60) Iraqi male nonspecialist EFL learners in AL-Mustansirya university, college of Education, the mathematic department, between the ages of 19 and 21 for second-year learners' during the academic year 2018 / 2019.
The researcher was chosen this department of college because she taught them through LLS in the first and second Semester during the academic year 2018/ 2019 by (chamot, 1998) procedures in teaching learning strategies through instructional framework. This framework consists of five steps: Preparation (eliciting students' foregoing knowledge to use language learning strategies); Presentation (introduction new learning to the class strategies); Practice (active implementation of strategies to language learning tasks); Evaluation (student self -assessment of the strategies practiced); and Expansion (regarding strategies taught to new contexts and tasks).

Instruments 3.2.1. Questionnaire of LLS
In resent year, the questionnaire has emerged " as one of the most widely used data-elicitation tools in LLS research" by Oxford and Burry-Stock (1995). According to Oxford and Crookall (1989), "Questionnaires have helped to generate a broad picture of strategy use across different learner populations and to establish relationships between various learner factors and learners' strategy use ". Chamot (2004) identified that questionnaires are " the most frequent and efficient method for identifying students' learning strategies ".
In present study, the researcher chooses direct strategies. The Oxford's classification of direct language learning strategies was adopted by the researcher herself, to be suitable to Iraqi male learners to apply the direct LLS, i.e., memory, cognitive, and compensation , based on the literature overview of the language learning strategies, some researches look at the learning strategies in the EFL field, the researcher's personal experience in the university field of teaching English as a second / foreign language, and the views of some teachers on language learning strategies.
Thus, the researcher was used the questionnaire in present study as the instrument to gather information. This questionnaire includes two parts. First part consists of questions about the personal particulars of the participant. The second part of Oxford's strategy Inventory on Language Learning (1990(SILL version7.0)) is adapted.
Also, the questionnaire of students includes was (30) items of direct strategies of (SILL) on a 5-point Likert -scale with response (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) from "never use it; rarely use it; sometimes use it; usually use it; always use it.'. This questionnaire is characterized by three sub-scales: items 1 to 9 of memory strategies, items 10 to 23 of cognitive strategies and items 24 to 30 of compensation strategies. See appendix (A). It is thought that a range of (3.5-5.0) on a SILL item indicates high use of the LLS, (2.5-3.4) medium use and (1.0-2.4) low use (Oxford, 1990).

Validity and Reliability of the test
In order to identify learners' performance on vocabulary retention, a test was designed by the researcher herself. The test consists of 80 items, investigating vocabulary knowledge of the learner through LLS. Therefore, in order to determine face validity, these test items were presented to a jury of experts for evaluation. The jurors are asked to verify if the test items are acceptable, and to add or modify something in the test that is necessary.
However, the percentage of agreement of the jury members upon the test was (80%).One of the methods that used to find out test reliability is test -retest, by using this method, test turned out to be (0.83). The test of the LLSV examed the subcategories of the (memory, cognitive, compression) language learning strategies. As for as this subcategory divided into 3 parts can be summarized as follows: 1. Memory strategies (grouping: This task was used to provide vocabulary throughout the spaces) including 10 items; (acronyms: this task was used in order to provide appropriate words (as one kind of context) including 10 words; (imagery: this task was used in order to provide pictures presented to the student to find related word) including 5 pictures. 2. Cognitive strategies (analysis: this task was used in order to ask students divided the words into suffixes and prefixes and then give the meaning of them including 10 words; (translation: this task was used in order to ask students to translate Arabic under lined words in the sentences including 10 words;( highlighting: this task was used in order to exam the effect of highlighting on vocabulary word retention of the students) including 10 items. 3. Compensation strategies (linguistic guessing: This task was used to find the meaning of such terms as antonyms and synonyms) including 10 words; (none-linguistic guessing: this task used in order to exam general knowledge of the world) including 5 items; (word coinage: This task was used to find a suitable equivalent in English) including 10 items.

The Pilot Study
The data was collected by the researcher during a week in Feb. 2019. In order to assess the ST and LT of vocabulary retention of direct language learning strategies, the test was once more administered after two weeks' time.
The Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS version 20.0) was utilized to complete the analysis of the gathered data. Descriptive statistics, which includes frequencies, standard deviations, means and One-way between groups (ANOVA) with post-hoc comparisons test was once used to investigate the differences between the LT and ST of vocabulary retention. In addition, the (0.05) level of statistical significance was set at all tests in present research. The time computed for the whole students in the pilot testing ranged between (45-60) minutes.

Results of Data Analysis
4.1. Question One: What are the most frequently used direct strategies of language learning by learners?
To answer the first study question, Descriptive statistics were used to determine the strategies of direct language learning that male learners of non-specialist college EFL report using. Table (1) outlines that the mean frequency of overall use of the strategy was (M=2.90), which was around at a medium degree (with a range from 1 to 5). In table (1), rank ordering of the strategies concurs to their frequency of usage. The results indicate that the learners' most frequently used strategy was memory strategies (M=2.95), followed by compensation strategies (M=2.90), and cognitive strategies (M=2.85). Therefore, there is a significant difference between the frequency of strategy that male learners of non-specialist college EFL report using.

Question Two: Does direct strategies of language learning influence on non-specialist EFL male learners' retention of vocabulary (LT and ST)?
According to the next question, the independent -samples t-test formula was utilized to investigate the impact of using ST and LT of vocabulary retention of DLLS. The results of this (t-test) analysis are illustrated in table (2). In overall strategy, the calculated t-value is (t =22.19), the tabular one is (t=2.000) with the degree of freedom (58). In addition, the performance of the learners in the ST test (Mean= 88.66) far outweighed that of the LT test (Mean= 73.19) which shows a statistically significant difference at (0.05).

Question Three: Does direct subcategories strategies of language learning influence on non-specialist EFL male learners' retention of vocabulary (LT and ST)?
To the third question, One-way variance analysis ANOVA examined the effect of using direct LLS subcategories, showing a statistically significant difference in the usage of memory, cognitive and compensation strategies in both ST (F=28.83) and LT (F=14.048) strategies. In table (3), repeated ANOVA results indicated that there was a significant difference between the three subcategories of memory strategies ( i.e. imagery, grouping and context) in the use of the overall learners' retention of vocabulary ST test subsort (F=149.37) and the LT test (F=166.78), Cognitive strategies (i.e., translation, analyzing expressions and highlighting) in the use of overall learners' retention of vocabulary subsort of ST test (F =64.639 ) and in the LT ( F =207.92), Compensation strategy (i.e. Linguistic guessing , non-linguistic guessing and Word coinage) in the use of learners' retention of vocabulary of ST (F=51.656) and LT (F=52.463) overall subsorting. According to the findings, the most used (both long-term LT and shortterm ST) strategies were (memory) and followed by (compensation and cognitive) strategies. Similarly, memory and compensation strategies can be assumed to have been used as students reported using them through the questionnaire, while cognitive strategies were reported to be used, but in practice they did not use such strategies in the test.

Conclusions
In the light of the present study, the researcher has concluded that: 1. In general, the frequency of strategies that Iraqi non-specialist college EFL male learners were using significantly different, all at medium use level. The most often used strategies were (memory) strategies, preceded by (compensation) strategies and (cognitive) strategies, based on the frequency of use rank order. 2. The findings showed that the use of the learners' strategy in shortterm vocabulary retention (ST) significantly outweighs that in long-term vocabulary retention (LT).Among the nine subcategories of these strategies, analyzing expressions, imagery, and non-linguistic guessing were the most impact assessed either in ST or LT.

Pedagogical Implications
The results of this study have pedagogical implications for the development of instruction and curriculum. Since, the researcher was summarized as follows: 1. English as a foreign language learner should learn to understand the strategies they use, and should be encouraged to choose the most suitable techniques for the instructional environment. 2. Productive language learners might act as informants in terms of methods, strategies, and research skills for learners with less progress in language learning. By monitoring one another, learners can take an active part not only through learning as well as in teaching. 3. Teachers may use a variety of methods for collecting data to help students identify their current learning strategies; surveys, one-on-one interviews, or other means. Teachers have to learn the benefits of each method and its disadvantages.

Appendix (A) Language learning strategies questionnaire
This is the questionnaire about language learning strategies for nonspecialist EFL learners in Iraq. Please read each item carefully, and check the most appropriate answer through the five response (1, 2, 3, 4 and 5).Answer in terms of how well the item describes you. Do not answer how you think you should be, or what other people do. Usually this questionnaire takes about (45-60) minutes to finish. Let the instructor know immediately if you have any questions. The questionnaire (SILL) has been translated into Arabic by the researcher and reviewed by two Arabic linguists to make it easier to understood for learners.
There are total (30) items in this questionnaire, and each item has five responses respectively.