American and Chinese students’ profiles based on Spanish-learning strategies: a transcultural comparison

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a study on the use of learning strategies in foreign languages, and more specifically Spanish. The study was conducted with 376 Chinese and American students who were studying Spanish in their countries of origin. The results obtained from a latent class cluster analysis identified five groups of participants based on the intensity in their use of different language-learning strategies. These groups were characterised by their age, the amount of time that they had been studying Spanish and the use of Spanish in the social milieu. Some differences were found among these groups as regards the level of Spanish attained, while none were detected with regard to either the learning context of origin or gender.

KEYWORDS:

• Language-learning strategies
• Spanish as a foreign language
• cultural background
• educational context
• latent class cluster analysis

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Spanish Departments of the Instituto Cervantes in China and the USA; and the American and Chinese students who participated in this study. The authors also wish to thank the editor and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.