4. DISCUSSION

Overall significant differences in SILL strategy use were not found between CFL and KFL groups, contrary to findings by Yang (2007) and Altan (2004) who looked at strategy use differences between students of different nationalities. The largest significant differences found in this study were a function of students’ parents’ educational levels.

However, Chinese students studying Korean in Korea were found to have used significantly more cognitive and affective category strategies than Korean students studying Chinese in Korea, generally consistent with Oxfords (1996) research reviews regarding foreign and second language environments.

That overall significant differences were found in the Chinese KSL students mean use of study strategies as a function of both mother’s and father’s education is consistent with Hsu’s (2008) research with Chinese students.  That a significant difference was not found between different levels of parents’ education in the Korean CFL students overall strategy use could be a function of lesser environmental demand for strategy use in general (Oxford, 1996) or a cultural difference between Chinese and Korean university students.  However, in the compensatory category of the SILL, a significant difference between different levels of parents’ education was found within the Korean CFL student group.  Compensatory strategies involve filling in missing knowledge. Thus, the data tentatively suggests that interacting with educated parents requires both Korean and Chinese students to develop greater ability in guessing related skills.

A failure to find gender differences is consistent with more recent research done in South Korea by Oh (1996), Park (1999) and Oxford (2008).  Kaylani’s (1996) finding that gender interacted with L2 proficiency and motivation also indicates that potentially numerous intervening variables may influence this factor. Given that older research in Asia tended to find more significant gender differences in Asia, with females tending to use more strategies, one might hypothesize that modernization and the social changes that go along with it may have had some degree of a leveling effect between male and female students’ use of language learning strategies.  This hypothetical leveling effect, however appears to not diminish differences in study strategy use between students with parents who have lesser and greater levels of education.  From this one might very tentatively surmise that “class-ism” as a function of parents’ education may be a more enduring factor in study strategy use than is sexism in modern Asia. Further research is warranted.

Potential intervening variables in this study and further research

Chinese is a tonal language using an ideographic system of writing.  Korean not a tonal language and uses a phonetic written language called “Hangul.” Chinese grammar structure is, like English, ordinarily structured in a subject-verb-object sequence.  Korean, like Japanese generally utilizes a subject-object-verb sequence. Post-test informal interviews with Chinese and Korean students participating in this study revealed that many had basic to intermediate level English language communication skills.  In many cases, L3 may be a better description of the language learning tested in this study and will need to be screened for in future research on this and related topics. Clearly auditory, visual and grammatical decoding neurological processing between Korean and Chinese languages is different.

Research by Hamada, and Koda (2008) indicates that orthographic distance influences L2 word learning processes.  On the other hand, both Korean and Chinese participants in this study experienced roughly equal disadvantages in this regard.

In a study on Chinese and Korean native speakers studying English and Japanese, Jeong et al. (2007) found that location of the L2-L1 processing-induced cortical activation varies between different L1-L2 pairs. Again, Korean and Chinese participants may have experienced roughly equal disadvantages in this regard. A similar study looking at learners of two Latin based language might indicate if these linguistic differences had an effect in this study.