13 While Q10 which stated,
“I read English books for pleasure” was the strategy in this category that got the highest percentage for the option
never
. Twelve students or about 23 did not use this strategy at all. This reveals that these twelve students read English
textbook if they had the tasks related to the textbook. It shows that the students ’ way of
learning depended on the interest, whether they liked reading or not. Therefore, it seems that in the case of item 10, the students may not have had any interest in reading, and hence they
barely used this strategy to learn English. The complete finding shows that cognitive strategies were used by almost all of
the students. It was widely known that cognitive strategies are crucial in language learning, especially in learning foreign language. Instead of focusing on memorization, it emphasizes
on deeper processing and usage of the language Biggs, 1988, as cited in Lan, 2005. This statement supported the idea that the students in this study were interested in English culture,
since they showed their interest in using the language. They observed and tried to apply what they had learned into a context. The biggest difficulty that limited them to use it in daily
communication was that the fact that they lived in EFL setting where it was hard to practice the language.
3. Compensation Strategy
Compensation strategies are used to allow learners to communicate despite deficiencies in their language knowledge. For example: using non linguistic clues to guess
meaning and using circumlocution or synonym Oxford, 1990. Figure 3 shows that this strategy was one of the most used strategies beside the
cognitive strategy. The percentage revealed that 91 students used this strategy to acquire English skills. In contrast, it was only 9 of students who never used compensation
strategies.
14
Figure 3. Average Use of Compensation Strategies
Although this category had the smallest percentage on the value
never
, it had no item that was used by all of the students. There was only one strategy that was used by almost
all of the students, since there was only one out of 52 student who did not use this strategy. It was Q12 which said,
“To understand unfamiliar English words, I make guesses.” Guessing unfamiliar word means that the students had to understand the grammar and context related to
the word first. Then, from the context, they would find the meaning or at least the closest meaning of the word. Thus, this strategy did not only help them to acquire new information,
but it also trained them to understand various contexts. Being compared to Q12, Q14 was the strategy in this category that had the
highest percentage for the value
never
. It had eight students who did not use this strategy at all. This strategy, which stated,
“I read English text without looking up every new word”, indicated that there were students who relied on the media e.g: dictionary when they were
reading English text. It might have connection to the fact that the students did not fond of reading for pleasure. Thus, they tend to use dictionary to find the meaning of the new words,
instead of paying attention to the context and trying to guess. However, it was still
Never 9
Rarely 30
Often 45
Always 16
15 understandable, since high school students were considered as intermediate English learners
and thus, there were a lot of unfamiliar vocabularies that they might meet in the text. Hence, to avoid mistake in order to understand the content of the text, they used dictionary to find the
meaning of unfamiliar words. Based on the finding, it can be said that the students often used guessing and
finding synonym when they dealt with new or unfamiliar words, topic, etc. These strategies would work well when the learners had to deal with context of a text, listening, or speaking.
According to Hismanoglu 2006, these strategies helped learners to create written or spoken expression in English, even though with limited knowledge. Thus, the learners were
encouraged to find another vocabulary or to make another phrase that had similar meaning, instead of depending on the dictionary.
4. Metacognitive Strategy
