Investigating the Relationship between Learners Gender, Proficiency and Language Learning trategies: the Case of EFL Iraqi Learners

Studying the use of language learning strategies in terms of learner's variables like proficiency and gender has been the focus of a growing body of research in an endeavour to find out any possible relation between them. the present study attempts to shed light on such a relationship as far as efl iraqi learners are concerned. for this purpose , oxford's strategy inventory for language learning ( sill ) ( 1990 ) is manipulated. the results which are based on the descriptive statistics indicate that the efl iraqi learners are medium strategy users. the most frequently used strategies are metacognitive strategies and the least frequently used ones are compensation strategies.. one way anova test shows that learners with better efl proficiency report using the overall strategy and each of the six categories of strategy significantly more frequently than learners with lower efl proficiency do. the study reveals no significant gender differences among overall strategy use.