Interdisciplinary and intercultural differences in learning strategy use: implications for language processing, curriculum and instruction

This investigation examines English as foreign language college interdisciplinary and intercultural differences in learning strategy use and their implications for language processing. Positivism underpins this research at the levels of ontology (standardized variables), epistemology (detachment from the subjects) and methodology, using nomothetic research strategy (survey), instruments (questionnaires) and data analysis techniques (multivariate analysis of variance and analysis of variance). Main findings show interdisciplinary differences between the Humanities and Science majors in student use of compensation strategies in favour of the Science major while finding no intermajor differences in student use of other strategies. The findings indicate no ethnic differences in learning strategy use, since European, American and Eastern ethnicities almost use typical strategies. Therefore, disagreements on alleged unmediated deterministic relationships between ethnicity and cognitive processing remain in place. Instead, curriculum and instructional designs, strategy training and individual differences rather than cultural stereotypes influence language processing. For curriculum and instructional designs to facilitate language processing and pedagogy, effective strategies should underlie national, classroom-level and school-level curriculum developments.