In the previous chapters, I have reported on an inquiry conducted in three phases on a group of mainland Chinese undergraduates' language learning experiences on the Chinese mainland and in Hong Kong. Drawing on sociocultural language learning research, the inquiry explored the dynamic relationship between the participants' strategy use and changing learning contexts. This chapter summarizes the main contributions that the inquiry may have with regard to the field of LLS research and discusses their implications for pedagogy and research. As strategy research is often related to researchers' interest in devising programmes to support and develop language learners, this chapter places particular emphasis on the contention that the findings from this inquiry broaden the current understanding of language learners' strategic learning and lend support to an expanded vision of learner development programmes.

Overall Findings

In Chapter 4, I described 22 participants' language learning experiences on the Chinese mainland and how their strategic learning efforts had been mediated by contextual conditions. Then I identified patterns of, as well as shifts in, their strategy use during the pre-Hong Kong year. The next step was a demonstration of how the participants were exposed to the mediation of various social agents, including parents, teachers and peers in the previous learning process. I also examined the dominant societal and traditional discourses in their motivational discourses about learning English and the mediation of cultural artefacts such as high-stakes examinations on their learning experiences.

In Chapter 5, in the light of the baseline findings from the study in Phase 1, the inquiry in Phase 3 revealed both shifts and continuity in the participants' strategy use. Underlying these shifts there were changes in the participants' discourses about language learning, in that they appeared to have diverse learning motives, including cultural motives, and yet, at the same time, they had further internalized the traditional discourses in Chinese culture and were exposed to the mediation of the societal discourses in Hong Kong, both attaching instrumental value to language learning.