La utilización de estrategias de aprendizaje en el proceso de adquisición del francés, lengua extranjera, en Educación Primaria

Resumo

This doctoral dissertation falls within the field of Teaching French as a Foreign Language in the Region of Murcia, where the researcher works. To contextualize this study and to show the rationale to be carried out, it is necessary to know the origins so that the main aim of this study can be understood. The results obtained in this research intend to foster how students learn French as a Foreign Language. The first chapter introduces the origins and the justification. In this chapter, the Master’s Thesis carried out by the researcher is presented, as it led to the design of this study. Moreover, the research problems and the objectives are shown. A series of objectives was created to guide this study with the aim of making more effective the teaching job and bearing in mind the idea of providing solutions to an existing problem in schools nowadays. The objective of any piece of research is to search for answers to a specific problem among the great variety of questions that may arise when focusing on a given issue. Based upon this idea, the aim of the study is specified through the following research objectives: The main objective is: To analyse those learning strategies used by students in Primary Education when learning French as a Foreign Language in the Region of Murcia. A series of specific objectives derived from the main objective is set, such as to find the kind of learning strategies most used by students, to describe them and analyse significative differences among them. Two main sections are presented: the theoretical and empirical frameworks. Chapter II deals with the theoretical framework and begins with a literature review on the background of learning strategies to learn foreign languages. This is followed by a study about learning styles, definitions and typology, focused on the acquisition of foreign languages. The empirical framework starts in Chapter III with the following subsections: methodology, variables, context, participants, procedure and data collection. The methodological approach used in the study is quantitative and non-experimental, with a transversal and descriptive survey design. Data were compared through descriptive and inferential analyses to cope with the research objectives. The results of the study are shown in Chapter IV. They are grouped into the research objectives described previously. Finally, the conclusions drawn from this study are gathered in Chapter V, whereas improvement proposals regarding the use of learning strategies and styles for students in the Region of Murcia are included in Chapter VI. Generally speaking, the results show that metacognitive strategies are those mostly used by the students. In conclusion, it can be stated the students’ awareness of the use of learning strategies that contribute to the improvement of their academic performance. Variables such as gender and age can be really significative for the acquisition of a language, as the results differ in boys and girls significatively. Although results among the different grades are not so obvious, it must be pointed out that students in Grade 5 have a higher level of participation and the results show more benefits for younger students.