Abstract :
This is study to find out how or strategies they use to learn English and Indonesian at
the University of Muhammadiyah Gresik. The exchange students could be called as EFL
students because they are nonnative speakers who live in a place where the majority does not
use English. The university which has student exchange program usually asks the students to
use English as universal language. Meanwhile, not all students from other countries can use
English fluently. So that is why, they have to learn English as foreign language and also the
native languagae of the country that they are visiting at the same time.
The design of the study is qualitative descriptive. Furthermore, qualitative research
was chosen because of the stability of researchers based on research experience and
qualitative methods can provide more details about the complex phenomenon that is difficult
to express by quantitative methods. The study were five EFL students, two are from Vietnam
and three are from Thailand. They also majored in English education at the University of
Muhammadiyah Gresik.Qualitative data in this study is the appearance of words in written
form which is observed by the researcher. These results can be valid if source of the data is
real. Source of data used in this study is primary sources. The data source is taken by
interviewing to the subject. The interview is done in the form of some questions related to the
goal of research in retrieving data.
The researcher collect the data throurgh interview. The question in interview was
consisted of 34 questions. The participants answer based on their own perception.The results
of the interviews can be classified in accordance with the learning strategy. Researchers who
analyzed the results of interviews of the four strategies EFL students; Use Group Work
Strategically, Adopt a Content-based Language Instruction Approach, Maintain a Positive
Relationship with All Students, Set Clear Expectations About When to Use Each Language.
The main types of learning strategy seen from the characteristic of each individual study
divided into; repeat of strategy, elaboration of strategy, organizational of strategy and
metacognitive of strategy. The above result, the reseacher concluded that the elaboration
learning strategy is high frequency.