© Impact Journals GENDER PERSPECTIVE AND LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGY IN THE EFL CLASSROOM

The last decades of the twentieth century saw many concerted efforts in research into gender issues all over the world. The study of language and gender has increasingly become the study of discourse and gender. The differences between approaches are especially evident when examining how various strands of discourse analysis interact with the field of language and gender studies, which has its own tradition of controversy and scholarly disagreement. This study intended to explore the language learning strategies used by learners of English as a foreign language at Haramaya University, and to find out the difference in strategy use between genders and its influence on their achievement in English. Mixed method research was employed for the study, which is mainly qualitative, but also uses quantitative techniques for triangulation purposes. The Sample were HU EFL Students (250 male and female). The data were analyzed through SPSS version 20 and using the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL), the study examines the relationship of language learning strategies, gender and achievement in learning the target language. To reveal the interconnections between these factors 5 point Likert scale was used. Mean and standard deviation, were performed on the gathered data to interpret the extent of dispersion. The t-test was used as an additional data analysis procedure that is appropriate for interval scale items. The findings of the study revealed that use of language learning strategies was very effective, in that, females were significantly more successful than males, and that they used mor