EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IRANIAN EFL LEARNERSʹʹ LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGIES AND CRITICAL THINKING

This study aimed at exploring the relationship among English as a foreign language (EFL) learnersʹ language learning strategy use, and critical thinking. To this aim, 250 sophomore, junior, and senior undergraduate students majoring in English Translation and English Literature at Islamic Azad University at Damavand, Iran were randomly selected and were asked to fill in the two questionnaires on Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) by Oxford (1990), and a questionnaire of Critical Thinking (CT) developed by Honey (2000). After discarding incomplete answer sheets, 230 acceptable cases were used in statistical analysis. Preliminary analyses were performed to ensure no violation of the assumptions of normality, linearity and homoscedasticity. The relationship between SILL, and CT, was investigated using Pearsonʹs product-moment correlation coefficient. Correlation analysis indicated that significant relationships exist between EFL learnersʹ use of language learning strategies & critical thinking (r = .89, P < .05). Moreover, running multiple regressions showed that memory strategy, as one component of language learning strategies, was the best predictor of critical thinking and predicted 72.7 percent of critical thinking. Social strategy was the second best predictor and enhanced the predictive power to 78.1 percent. The metacognitive strategy enhanced the predictive power to 79.2 percent. And finally, the compensation strategy increased the percentage of prediction to 798%. Implications of the study are presented and discussed.