An Analysis of the Relationships Between Test Takers' Cognitive and Metacognitive Strategy Use and Second Language Test Performance

Considerable research on the relationships between learner strategy use and second language acquisition has provided descriptions and generated taxonomies; however, most of these studies have lacked a firm theory of cognition and none have used powerful statistical analyses. This study used sophisticated statistical methods to investigate the relationships between test takers' reported strategy use and performance on second language tests (SLTP). Participants were 1,382 test takers from 17 centers in Spain, Turkey and the Czech Republic. They answered an 80‐item Cognitive and Metacognitive Strategy Questionnaire and took a 70‐item standardized language test. The results explained SLTP by 2 highly‐related factors, grammar and reading ability; cognitive processing (CP) by 3 factors, comprehending, storing and retrieval processes; and metacognitive processing (MP) by one general assessment factor. In addition, MP had no direct effect on SLTP but a significant, positive direct influence on CP, implying that MP exerts an executive function over CP. Then, CP had no significant effect on reading ability nor on grammar ability. However, the memory processes had a significant, negative effect, and the retrieval processes a significant, positive effect, on grammar ability; that is, the more test takers invoked memory strategies, the worse they performed; the less they used the memory strategies, the better they performed.