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UNIVERSITY OF THE AEGEAN - FACULTY OF HUMANITIES
DEPARTMENT OF MEDITERRANEAN STUDIES
11th International Conference
on Greek Linguistics
(Rhodes, 26-29 September 2013)
Selected Papers / Πρακτικά
Edited by
G. Kotzoglou, K. Nikolou, E. Karantzola,
K. Frantzi, I. Galantomos, M. Georgalidou,
V. Kourti-Kazoullis, Ch. Papadopoulou, E. Vlachou
RHODES 2014
Τext editing
M. Fesopoulos
Layout
A4_artdesign
ISBN 978-960-87197-9-8
© Rhodes 2014
LABORATORY OF LINGUISTICS OF THE SE MEDITERRANEAN
11th International Conference on Greek Linguistics
Rhodes, 26-29 September 2013
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
SECRETARIAT SUPPORT
DEPARTMENT OF MEDITERRANEAN STUDIES
11th International Conference
on Greek Linguistics
Edited by
LABORATORY OF LINGUISTICS
OF THE SOUTHEASTERN MEDITERRANEAN
TRANSLATION AND CULTURAL ADAPTATION OF THE SILL
INTO WESTERN THRACIAN TURKISH FOR MEASURING STRATEGY USE
IN MUSLIM STUDENTS LEARNING GREEK AS A SECOND LANGUAGE1
Zoe Gavriilidou1, Kostandinos Petrogiannis2, Achilles Bardos3, Penelope
Kambakis-Vougiouklis1, Lydia Mitits1 & Nursen Molla1
1Democritus University of Thrace, 2Hellenic Open University, 3University of Colorado
zoegab@otenet.gr, kpetrogiannis@eap.gr, abardos@comcast.net,
pekavou@helit.duth.gr, lydiamitits@gmail.com, Nursen_cem@hotmail.com
Abstract
The purpose of the present study is to record the process of adapting Oxford’s (1990)
Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) from English into Turkish with the
aim to administer it to Turkish speaking students of the Muslim Minority in Thrace,
Greece, in order to collect data of language learning strategy use concerning Greek as a
second language and English as a foreign language This research focuses on following
the appropriate adaptation protocol that would maximize the questionnaire reliability
and validity both with the particular learner population and when used to compare the
scores across cultures and languages. The original scale in English was translated into
the local variety of Turkish. The translated scale was then back-translated and reviewed.
Cross-cultural adaptation included the submission of the reviewed version to a panel of
experts to obtain data on comprehensibility and appropriateness. The recommendations
made by the professionals of the expert panel were included in an adapted version of the
SILL administered to 77 participants. Its internal consistency was calculated with
Cronbach’s alpha and found to be .89. Test-retest reliability ranged from fair to good for
the total scale and its six-subscales.
Keywords: questionnaire adaptation, SILL, language learning strategies, reliability,
validity
1. Introduction
Language learning strategies have been defined as ‘specific actions taken by the learner
to make learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective, and
more transferable to new situations (Oxford 1999: 9). Strategy use has been associated,
among others, with academic performance (Chamot 2007) and motivation to learn a
language (Oxford & Nyikos 1989, Ehrman & Oxford 1995, Mochizuki 1999, Wharton
2000, Schmidt & Watanabe 2001, Psaltou-Joycey 2003, Vrettou 2009). Furthermore
there is evidence to suggest that language learning strategies can be taught (Chamot
2005, Hassan et al. 2005, Cohen & Macaro 2007, Graham & Macaro 2008, Gavriilidou
& Papanis 2010, Plonsky 2011). The last decade has seen a growing interest in studying
1This study is part of the Thales project MIS 379335. It was held in the frame of the National Strategic
Reference Frame (Ε.Σ.Π.Α.) and was co-funded by resources of the European Union (European Social
Fund) and national resources.
Selected Papers of the 11th International Conference on Greek Linguistics
11th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON GREEK LINGUISTICS
language learning strategies of bilingual Turkish-Greek speaking children living in
Thrace, Greece and comparing them to language learning strategies used by
monolingual Greek-speaking children (Papanis 2008, Intze & Kambaki 2009,
Gavriilidou & Papanis 2010). That research has identified the problem of not having a
valid and reliable instrument for measuring language learning strategy use and has
demonstrated the need for relevant instrument adaptation.
As the majority of questionnaires are developed in English-speaking countries, there
are a number of points to consider when adapting a questionnaire in order to avoid
serious errors of interpretation. The present study illustrates a questionnaire adaptation
procedure in order to administer it in a different linguistic and cultural setting from the
original one. More specifically, it records the process of adapting Oxford’s (1990)
Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) from English into Turkish with the
aim to administer it to bilingual Turkish-Greek speaking children of the Muslim
minority living in Thrace, Greece in order to investigate strategy use of that population
when learning English as a foreign language and compare it on the one hand with
strategy use when learning Greek as a second language and on the other with strategy
use of monolingual Greek-speaking children when learning English.
2. Literature Review
2.1 Construction and adaptation of SILL
The Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) (Oxford 1990) is a 50-item
questionnaire which is most often used around the world in the last couple of decades
for assessing the frequency of use of language learning strategies by language learners.
The answer categories are structured on a five-point scale ranging from 1= “never or
almost never true of me”, to 5 = “always or almost always true of me”.
Factor analysis (Oxford 1986) allowed the researcher to group language learning
strategies included in the instrument into six categories (factors):
1. Memory strategies (grouping, imagery, rhyming, structured reviewing, etc.) (9 items).
2. Cognitive strategies (reasoning, analyzing, summarizing, etc., as well as general
practicing) (14 items).
3. Compensation strategies (guessing meanings from the context, using synonyms and
gestures to convey meaning when the precise expression is not known, etc.) (6 items).
4. Metacognitive strategies (paying attention, consciously searching for practice
opportunities, planning for language tasks, self-evaluating one’s progress, monitoring
errors, etc.) (9 items).
5. Affective strategies (anxiety reduction, self-encouragement, self-reward, etc.) (6
items).
6. Social strategies (asking questions, cooperating with native speakers of the language,
becoming culturally aware, etc.) (6 items).
SILL has been translated into at least 17 languages and administered to 10,000
learners approximately (Oxford 1999, Chamot 2001) including Chinese (Yang 1992),
Japanese (Watanabe 1990), Korean (Oh 1992), Turkish (Cesur & Fer 2007, Demirel
2009), Greek (Kazamia 2003, Vretou 2011, Kambakis-Vougiouklis 2012, Gavriilidou
and Mitits to appear) and other. However this instrument has been extensively used in
selected papers / πρακτικα
adult samples and its use in younger populations is minimal (Ardasheva & Tretter
2013).
2.2 Strategies used by bilingual Turkish-Greek speaking children living in Thrace,
Greece
Language learning strategies used by Turkish-speaking children having Greek as a
second language were measured in previous research (Papanis 2008, Gavriilidou &
Papanis 2010) with a 36 item Likert-scale instrument written in Greek. The scale was
based on O’Malley & Chamot’s (1990) classification of learning strategies. Two were
the basic restrictions of that instrument: (a) the fact that it was written in Greek was
considered as a factor affecting its validity, given the –sometimes– poor knowledge of
Greek of the Muslim minority children in Greece; (b) the data collected with that
instrument as well as the results of the study were not comparable with other studies on
language learning strategy use, since the instrument usually used in the majority of such
studies is the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning in English Language. Kambakis
et al (to appear) studied Language Learning Strategies employed by Turkish speaking
children having Greek as a second language with an oral administration of SILL which
used a fuzzy bar technique instead of the usual Likert scale. Using the response
methodology children had to answer all the 50-items validated SILL (Gavriilidou &
Mitits to appear) in the form of oral interview before their teacher, who was also the
researcher and who recorded every comment they made. The informants had to specify
how often they used each strategy cutting a [01] bar accordingly, instead of choosing
from a limited Likert scale choices; they also had to specify how confident they felt
with each strategy, no matter how often they used it, cutting another [01] bar. The
advantages of the [01] fuzzy bar technique were the following: (a) at the data collection
stage, the informants did not have to try and refine differences such as not often and
rarely on a Likert scale, especially the less sophisticated ones; they only had to choose
any point on the continuum without specifying their choice verbally; and (b) at the data
processing stage, the researcher might make use of the potential offered by the bar
concerning the more liberal handling of the results by applying different divisions of the
bar or investigate the Gauss distribution (Vougiouklis & Kambakis-Vougiouklis 2013).
However, validity problems persisted due to the fact that the Greek version of SILL was
used.
On the other hand, unpublished pilot studies held by the researchers using the
translated into standard Turkish version of SILL (Demirel 2009) showed that this
version of the instrument was not suitable for the specific population who speaks a local
variety of Turkish, referred to in the linguistics literature as “Western Thracian Turkish”
(Batı Trakya Türkçesi). This variety is characterized by morphological simplification,
especially in verb and noun formation and phonological differences vis-à-vis Standard
Turkish as well as loan words form Greek” (Lytra 2007: 43; see also Sella Mazi 1993).
The purpose of the current study is (a) to adapt the six-category SILL (v7) for school
aged bilingual Turkish-Greek children of the Muslim minority of Thrace, Greece and
(b) to examine the culturally adapted instrument with this population in order to
investigate strategy use of that population when learning English as a foreign language
and finally (c) to compare it on the one hand with strategy use when learning Greek as a
second language and on the other with strategy use of monolingual Greek-speaking
children when learning English.
11th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON GREEK LINGUISTICS
3. Method
The process of SILL adaptation was partially based on the procedure proposed by
Rahman et al. (2003). The process comprised three phases:
the translation process which was undertaken at three levels –
linguistic/semantic, technical and conceptual level;
the cross-cultural verification and adaptation;
the verification of the psychometric properties of the questionnaire.
In addition, the guidelines for the cross-cultural adaptation process developed by
Beaton et al. (2000) were considered. The procedure included six stages:
initial translation which was performed by two independent translators, one of
whom was an expert in the field, while the other had no relevance with the
subject;
synthesis of the translations during which any discrepancies between the two
initial translations were resolved;
back translation into the original language;
expert committee review which ensured semantic, idiomatic, experiential and
conceptual equivalence;
pretesting of the final version and, finally;
submission of final reports drawn for all the five stages to a coordinating
committee.
3.1 The translation protocol
3.1.1 The initial translation
The first stage in the adaptation was the forward translation of SILL from English into
the local variety of Turkish. Two bilingual translators living in Thrace, Greece, whose
mother tongue was the local variety of Turkish, one naïve and one informed about the
purpose of the study produced two independent translations (T1 and T2). They also
composed two independent written reports in which they explained the rationale of their
translation choices as well as dubious phrases, uncertainties or encountered translation
problems.
3.1.2 The synthesis of the translations
The two translations were compared and discrepancies reflecting ambiguities in the
original instrument were recorded. In turn, the two translators and the researchers
worked on the translator’s separate versions (T1 and T2) and produced a synthesis of
the two versions (T12) by discussing the translation of each of the 50 items. They also
wrote a report describing the synthesis procedure, the cases discussed and the solutions
which were adopted.
selected papers / πρακτικα
3.1.3 Back translation
Two teachers of English language having the local variety of Turkish as mother tongue
and ignoring the original version of SILL translated the T12 version back into English
in order to verify that the translated T12 version in Turkish reflects the same item
content as the original English version. The two translators, who were not aware of the
purpose of the study, handed in the two back translations (BT1 and BT2) as well as two
independent reports documenting the back translation procedure.
3.1.4 Expert committee examination
The expert committee consisted of two linguists, one Turkish-speaking teacher at a
minority high school and the four translators. The role of the committee was to examine
all the relevant material (initial instrument, T1, T2, T12, BT1, BT2, and the five reports)
and to review all the translations to resolve possible discrepancies. Its final goal was to
create the final Turkish version of the SILL. In order to achieve this, the experts
counter-examined the source and target version of SILL considering the following: a)
the semantic equivalence, i.e. if the words meant the same in Turkish and English and
whether there were any grammatical difficulties in Turkish translation, b) the idiomatic
equivalence, i.e. the correct translation of idioms or collocations c) the experiential
equivalence, i.e. if all items expressed tasks which are experienced in the target culture
d) the conceptual equivalence, i.e. if all the words hold the same conceptual meaning in
the two cultures.
The committee produced the final Turkish version of SILL for the specific
population and wrote a final report which they handed to the researchers. This version
was then used for collecting data in order to measure the psychometric properties of the
instrument.
3.2 Sampling
The study presents an analysis of data collected in the context of the Thales project no
379335 of bilingual Turkish-Greek speaking students aged 8-15. The sample included
77 primary school and high school students attending minority schools of Komotini
who filled in the questionnaire.
3.3 Procedure
The participants first provided written informed consent and then completed the
questionnaires individually. The study was approved by the Pedagogical Institute of
Greece and the Ethics Committee of the Democritus University of Thrace. The SILL
questionnaire was administered during a regular instructional hour by EFL teachers at
the end of the school year (May 2013). The teachers were instructed to read and explain
the directions to the students.
11th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON GREEK LINGUISTICS
4. Results
4.1 Reliability
Based on the analysis of the data, a total sum score of all 50 items was computed.
Moreover, total scores in each one of the six strategy subscales (memory strategies,
cognitive strategies, compensation strategies, metacognitive strategies, affective
strategies, social strategies) were also calculated. The overall scale showed high
reliability (Cronbach’s α =.89). Similarly all six subscales exhibited medium to high
levels of internal consistency using the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient (memory strategies
α =.69, cognitive strategies α =.80, compensation strategies α =.49, metacognitive
strategies α =.46, affective strategies α =.76, social strategies α =.80)
4.2 Validity
Validity refers to the degree to which an instrument measures what it claims to measure
(Oxford 1996). Abraham and Vann (1996) point out that validation is an ongoing
process and that we should not validate the instrument per se but the way in which data
are interpreted and the findings justified, as well. According to the written reports
submitted by the panel of experts, it can be assumed that the Turkish version of the
questionnaire is as valid as the original one concerning the item-level equivalence since
the careful adaptation procedure has ensured semantic, idiomatic, experiential and
conceptual equivalence. Its validity is further improved by resolving technical issues of
questionnaire translation.
5. Discussion
The current study provides evidence for an adapted version of the SILL as a useful and
psychometrically sound measure of language learning strategies that may contribute to
the scientific investigation of the strategies employed by bilingual Turkish-Greek
speakers of the Muslim minority in Thrace, Greece. A further benefit is at a practical
level since this knowledge may serve for a more pedagogically appropriate design of
class interventions for efficacious strategic language teaching.
There is strong evidence that most of the criteria required were met during the SILL
adaptation. Linguistic and cultural differences were fully considered and appropriate
statistical techniques were applied. Reliability of the questionnaire was measured and
found to be sufficiently high. In addition, total scores on the SILL were reliable over a
three week interval. Validity was discussed with respect to its construct across cultural
and linguistic specificities, but also during focus groups and panel of experts meetings
and with reference to other relevant studies carried out in the Greek context
There were attempts to reduce the potential biases that may occur during translation.
Construct and item bias were recorded and were confronted appropriately in order to
overcome the problem of measuring different constructs in different cultural groups or
distorting the meaning of individual items. That is why “adaptation” and not
“application” or “assembly” was selected as it allows for a solution to the afore-
mentioned problems of bias. Method bias, in particular administration bias often
selected papers / πρακτικα
encountered in the ambiguous instructions for test-takers or guidelines for
administrators, was overcome in the present study by the adaptation of the layout and
provision of a detailed user-friendly manual and administration protocol. Based on the
existing literature, the present study used expert informants concerning Greek and
Turkish language as well as those qualified to judge Greek educational context which
all the students share, independent of the cultural or language group. Representative
samples of the target population were also used providing significant feedback on the
linguistic, technical and conceptual levels of the adapted instrument.
Three benefits can be identified from this research. First, this study addresses a lack
of the SILL validation for bilingual Turkish-Greek speaking children of the Muslim
minority living in Thrace, Greece. Second, the study discusses the lack of an instrument
adapted for school aged children. Third, the paper responds to some theoretical concerns
raised in the literature about questionnaire translation and cultural adaptation.
6. Conclusion and further investigation
The purpose of the present paper was to describe the procedure concerning the
translation and cultural adaptation of the SILL in Western Thracian Turkish, which is
spoken by bilingual Turkish-Greek speaking children of the Muslim minority in Thrace
Greece. It can be concluded that the process of adaptating the Strategy Inventory for
Language Learning from English into Turkish recorded in this paper, although a time
consuming and costly procedure, is the most effective way to produce an instrument for
measuring the frequency of language learning strategy use of the particular learner
population It also allows for comparison of data and findings across cultural groups as it
provides the opportunity to examine language learning strategies of children/students
for whom there was no translated version of the SILL. The carefully designed and
performed adaptation process ensures high instrument reliability and validity and
provides other researchers who are interested in questionnaire adaptation a procedure
that overcomes most of the problems encountered when instruments are used in
different languages and cultures. Further studies using the adapted instrument with the
same target population (scheduled for February-May 2014) will collect data from the
whole population attending minority schools in the regions of Xanthi and Komotini
(Thrace, Greece) and will provide data about the internal consistency, reliability,
construct validity and responsiveness of the specific version of the SILL.
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