Test-taking strategy use by Chinese young EFL learners in an authentic international standardized English test

Feifei Han

doi:10.30827/portalin.vi39.24390

Authors

Feifei Han https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8464-0854

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30827/portalin.vi39.24390

Keywords:

Chinese young EFL learners, test-taking strategy use, authentic international standardized English test, Cambridge Young Learners English Test, a mixed-methods approach

Abstract

The current study examined language test-taking strategies used by Chinese young learners of English as a foreign language (EFLs) in an authentic international standardized English test–Cambridge Young Learners English Test: Flyers Test. It adopted a mixed-methods approach: the quantitative part was a survey administered to 138 participants, and the qualitative part consisted of think-aloud sessions and retrospective interviews with six participants (three were high-achievers and three were low-achievers). The quantitative results show that in general, children adopted metacognitive test-taking strategies more frequently than cognitive test-taking strategies irrespective of language skills; and the high-achievers used test-taking strategies more frequently than their low-achievers. The two-way interaction effects between levels of test performance ☓ strategy type and between language skills ☓ strategy type were also significant. The qualitative results demonstrate that the high-achievers not only used a broader range of cognitive strategies than low-achievers, they also used the same metacognitive strategies at an in-depth level and in a more sophisticated way than low-achievers. The results of the study suggest that expanding Chinese young EFL learners’ repertoire of test-taking strategies and modeling desirable ways of using strategies may help them improve their test-taking strategy use.

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