Indirect Learning Strategies of Mandarin as A Foreign Language Learners During Online Learning in COVID-19 Pandemic Period

Abstract

The study seeks to investigate the indirect language learning strategies used by learners of Mandarin as a foreign language in an online learning environment during the COVID-19 Pandemic period. A simple random sampling was employed, and 445 Malay undergraduate students engaged in a Mandarin course in a Malaysian university participated by answering a questionnaire. The Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL), developed by Oxford in 1990 was used to collect the data. To ascertain the pattern of indirect language learning strategies preferred by male and female degree students in the Mandarin Course, descriptive statistics were utilised in the study. The Independent Sample t-Test was also utilized to examine the significant differences between the indirect learning strategies used by the male and female degree learners. The results show that the metacognitive strategy is the favourite indirect learning strategy for Malay undergraduates, followed by affective strategies and social strategies. Additionally, regardless of gender, metacognitive strategy emerged as the most common learning strategy. However, results indicated that there were no significant differences between the metacognitive learning strategies employed by male and female degree students. These findings provide repercussions to Mandarin as a foreign or second language educators to assess existing teaching strategies to enhance the effectiveness in classroom which offer various learning strategies to make students better learners.