The “Very Successful L2 Learner ” in the Sixth Grade of the Greek Elementary School as Portrayed through a Qualitative Study

Joan Rubin’s (1975) seminal article on “successful learners ” instigated prolific research into those language learning strategies which would distinguish a good from a poorer learner in order to diminish the difference them. Dearth of similar research in the Greek context, especially at primary educational level, gave rise to a study of a quantitative and a qualitative paradigm with the purpose of investigating the strategies of Greek-speaking 6th-graders in elementary schools according to their language proficiency, motivation, and gender in Thessaloniki in 2008 (Vrettou 2011). This paper presents the qualitative data collected through semi-structured short interviews of 30 participants, long interviews of 12 students as well as interviews of those informants ’ Greek and English language teachers (24 in total). The results depicted the excelling lower intermediate or B1 (Council of Europe 2001) level student. Implications for teachers include aiming for the characteristics of this very successful learner, being strategic ingenuity, very high motivation, divergence from rote memorization with a lot of critical thinking, and high metacognition. Such features are supported in the new Greek Cross-Thematic Curriculum Framework for Compulsory Education (2003), accentuating the importance of strategy instruction in the EFL classroom. Key words: language learning strategies, language proficiency level, motivation to learn English