Does context make a difference?: strategies and beliefs across groups of different EFL contexts

Abstract

English is nowadays one of the most widely spoken languages around the world. Therefore, there are many contexts in which it is learnt, such as formal instruction and immersion. It appeared interesting to examine different learning contexts in order to compare how the students of each of them tackled the task of learning the language and what their thoughts were about language learning. Thus, this paper explores strategy use and beliefs about motivation, difficulty and aptitude of students from three different contexts (EFL, language specialists and immersion at school). Fifty-two people responded to a questionnaire based on SILL and BALLI posted online. However, this was a low number taking into account that three groups were to be analyzed. The results showed that the immersion and specialist groups were more motivated and the EFL learners found learning the language to be the hardest. However, cognitive strategies were the most employed by all groups. The EFL learners showed a preference for memory strategies, the immersion category for interactive strategies and the language specialists for metacognitive strategies. Thus, one can argue that context affects beliefs and strategies and promotes different relationships with the language.