The Learners' Strategies and Speaking Task in One Japanese EFL Classroom

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to confirm the relationship between the learners' strategies and the learner's proficiency in speaking task. The research consists of three studies. The first study is to identify what kind of strategies the Japanese learners use in speaking tasks. The second is to see how higher proficiency language learners use strategies differently in order to aid communication. The third is to compare the strategy use between Japanese learners and other nationalities. The results confirmed that there is a close relationship between the proficiency and strategies, and the proficient learners who use Metacognitive strategy most employ a wider variety of strategies than less proficient learners. Also Japanese strategy use is not very different from that of Hispanic nationalities.