Language Learning Strategy Preferences of 1st Year Students of Uzunköprü Vocational College

What makes a learner “a good learner” and how we can use this to improve the learning of the other learners have long been discussed and studied. Studies conducted throughout years have shown that “Language Learning Strategies” affect the learners in many ways such as motivation, academic success and autonomous learning. Every learner possesses and conducts some of these learning strategies but not all of them succeed. However, the chosen or known strategy might be incompatible with the learners’ needs and their learning styles. The strategy might be incompatible with the learning task and become fruitless for the learner. As a result, it is important for learners to possess a variety of Language Learning Strategies to use in different kind of learning situations. The aim of this study is to gain knowledge about the learning strategy preferences of the 1st year students of Uzunköprü Vocational College. Turkish translation of Language Learning Strategy Inventory developed by Oxford (1990) is used in this study to determine the students’ preferences. The validity and reliability study of the translated inventory was conducted by Cesur and Fer (2007) and the translated inventor was used in several studies (Hamamcı 2012, Karatas, Balyer, Alcı, 2015, Ocak, Baysal, 2016, Saracaloğlu, Dincer , 2017) which made it applicable to use for this study. The results of the study show an insight about the student preferences of the language learning strategies and the variety of the strategies they use.