Compensation Still Matters: Language Learning Strategies in the Third Millennium ESL Learners

Abstract

Digital media play enormous roles in much of the learning, communication, socializing and ways of working of “Net-Generation” learners who are growing up in a wired world. Living in this digital era may require different ways of communicating, thinking, approaching learning, prioritizing strategies, interpersonally communicating, and possibly developing compensatory techniques for information gaps among other categories of Language Learning Strategies. The Net-Geners therefore, need new skills and new strategies to perform successfully as learners and workers. This study uses a mixed-methods approach that includes concurrent quantitative and qualitative data (i) to identify the Net-Generation learner’s strategy preferences based on the “Strategies Inventory for Language Learning” (SILL) categories currently considered the most comprehensive strategy inventory and (ii) to identify possible emergent compensation strategies among Net-Geners as a comprehensive study of the strategies used by the Net-Geners is clearly beyond the scope of this article. The results indicate that compensation strategies have undergone a number of modifications and are used differently by the Net-Geners in order to compensate their knowledge gap and help enhance their ESL learning.