Considerable research has provided evidence that language learning strategies have a strong relation to successful L2 learning. However, use differs across L2 learners, language-specific tasks, and individual learner variables affecting strategy use. Moreover, there is a paucity of research examining strategy use for specific tasks in learning Japanese.

This study examined the strategy development and use of 19 learners of Japanese, and also explored the strategy use of these participants based on their achievement at the high level (n = 8) and low level (n = 5) (as measured by midterm exam scores and the teacher's perception) at an American university. By using e-mail queries, concurrent interviews, and the SILL (Oxford, 1990) over a period of a one and a half months, this study examined strategies the learners used for learning kanji, vocabulary, dialogue, and grammar tasks, and examined differences in the use of specific strategies between high and low achievers.

The results showed that although learners tended to use some common cognitive strategies, the quality of strategy use between the high and low achievers differed. The high achievers used a wider range of strategies, especially with regard to cognitive, metacognitive, and social strategies. Also, although both high (M = 6.38 hours) and low (M = 6.13 hours) achievers reported comparable amounts of time studying Japanese per week, high achievers spent their time more wisely (strategically) by being more active in producing language, and their practice distributed over multiple times to monitor their performance. This suggests that quality of strategy use is one of the factors which makes a distinction in the level of achievement in the learning of Japanese, and introducing the appropriate strategies to tasks in the classrooms may be beneficial to learners' success in learning Japanese.