Estrategias de aprendizaje en universitarios europeos de español como segunda lengua: estudio de caso en Alemania

Abstract

Learning a foreign language is part of the transversal training of any professional in the European area. Likewise, more and more we are witnessing a reality in which the teacher leaves his responsibility as the author of student learning and is in charge of guiding and focusing them towards meaningful autonomous learning through language learning strategies (LLS). These strategies have become very important in recent decades in the field of second language (SL) study due to the important role they play in the acquisition of a foreign language. In this context, we have posed the following research questions: (1) How are the learning strategies of SFL university students defined in Germany ?; (2) What or what are the predominant learning strategies in each of the german universities ?; (3) Are there one or more predominant strategies in each of the universities in which this study has been carried out ?; (4) Is there any personal variable that influences the use of the strategies ?; (5) How important are new technologies? Therefore, in this doctoral thesis we have focused on the investigation of our hypotheses about the LLS used by 385 university students of Spanish as a foreign language (SFL) from four universities located in the state of Bavaria, in Germany. The study has been carried out in different stages in which the SILL Strategy Inventory for Language Learning questionnaire (Oxford, 1990), a questionnaire on new technologies used in autonomous learning and a Portfolio have been implemented as an evaluation tool to implement strategies learning and develop the autonomy of students. On the one hand, we have contrasted the variables gender, L1 and L2 with the results of the SILL questionnaire, which indicated in the correlations that social and compensatory strategies are the most used; women use memory and compensatory strategies mostly, while men use metacognitive and cognitive strategies; and the FL variable influences the frequency of use of the compensatory category. Secondly, the new technologies questionnaire yielded data such as that mobile applications for learning Spanish play an important role in the language acquisition process for our study subjects, as well as the use of different applications dedicated to learning Spanish. Finally, with the Portfolio we have verified that it enhances the autonomy of the student, as well as the use of the metacognitive strategy, in addition to improving the students' grades in most of the language skills. These results hope to be a small contribution to the LLS knowledge of European SFL learners.