what are the learning strategies

7/30/2019 What Are the Learning Strategies

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I. What are the learning strategies and the teaching strategies?

II. What is the significance of the studies of learning strategies and the teaching

strategies? Do the strategies mean anything to L2 teaching?

III. How do the learning strategies and the teaching strategies correspond to each

other?

Ans.

I. What are the learning strategies and the teaching strategies?

(1) Learning Strategies:

In first language learning, a learning strategy is a way in which a learner attempts to

work out the meanings and uses of words, grammatical rules, and other aspects of a

language, for example by the use of generalization and inferencing. A child may not pay

attention to grammatical words in a sentence, but in trying to understand a sentence may

use the learning strategy that the first mentioned noun in a sentence refers to the person or

thing performing an action.

However, in second language learning, the learning strategies mean the intentional

behavior and thoughts that learners make use of during learning in order to better help them

understand, learn or remember new information. These may include focusing on certain

aspects of new information, analyzing and organizing information during learning to

increase comprehension, evaluating learning when it is completed to see if further action is


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needed. Learning strategies may be applied to simple tasks such as learning a list of new

words, or more complex tasks involving language comprehension and production. The

effectiveness of second language learning is thought to be improved by teaching learners

more effective learning strategies.

Learning Strategy Description

Metacognitive StrategiesMetacognitive Strategies

Advance Organizers Making a general but comprehensive preview of the

organizing concept or principle in an anticipated learning

activity

Directed Attention Deciding in advance to attend in general to a learning task

and to ignore irrelevant distractors

Selective Attention Deciding in advance to attend to specific aspects of language

input or situational details that will cue the retention of

language input

Self-Management Understanding the conditions that help one learn and

arranging for the presence of those conditions

Functional Planning Planning for and rehearsing linguistic components necessary

to carry out an upcoming language task

Self-Monitoring Correcting ones speech for accuracy in pronunciation,

grammar, vocabulary, or for appropriateness related to the

setting or to the people who are present

Delayed Production Consciously deciding to postpone speaking in order to learn

initially through listening comprehension

Self-Evaluation Checking the outcomes of ones own language learning

against an internal measure of completeness and accuracy

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Cognitive StrategiesCognitive Strategies

Repetition Imitating a language model, including over practice and

silent rehearsal

Resourcing Using target language reference materials

Translation Using the first language as a base for understanding and/or

producing the second language

Grouping Reordering or reclassifying, and perhaps labeling, the

material to be learned base on common attributes

Note Taking Writing down the main idea, important points, outline, or

summary of information presented orally or in writing

Deduction Consciously applying rules to produce or understand the

second language

Inducing Looking for patterns and regularities

Recombination Constructing a meaningful sentence or larger language

sequence by combining known elements in a new way

Imagery Relating new information to visual concepts in memory via

familiar, easily retrievable visualizations, phrases, or

locations

Auditory Representation Retention of the sound or a similar sound for a word, phrase,

or longer language sequence

Keyword Remembering a new word in the second language by (1)

identifying a familiar word in the first language that sounds

like or otherwise resembles the new word and (2) generating

easily recalled images of some relationship between the new

word and the familiar word

Contextualization Placing a word or phrase in a meaningful language sequence

Elaboration Relating new information to other concepts in memory

Transfer Using previously acquired linguistic and/or conceptual

knowledge to facilitate a new language learning task

Inferencing Using available information to guess meanings of new items,

predict outcomes, or fill in missing information

Classifying Putting things that are similar together in groups

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Predicting Predicting what is to come in the learning process

Concept Mapping Showing the main ideas in a text in the form of a map

Diagramming Using information from a text to label a diagram

Discriminating Distinguishing between the main idea and supporting

information

Linguistic StrategiesLinguistic Strategies

Conversational Patterns Using expressions to start conversations and keep them going

Practicing Doing controlled exercises to improve knowledge and skills

Using Context Using the surrounding context to guess the meaning of

unknown words, phrases, and concepts

Summarizing Picking out and presenting the major points in a text in

summary formSelective Listening Listening for key information without trying to understand

every word

Skimming Reading quickly to get a general idea of a text

Affective StrategiesAffective Strategies

Personalizing Learners share their own opinions, feelings, and ideas about a

subject

Self-Evaluating Thinking about how well you did on a learning task, and

rating yourself on a scale

Reflecting Thinking about ways you learn best

Socioaffective StrategiesSocioaffective Strategies

Cooperation Working with one or more peers to obtain feedback, pool

information, or model a language activity

Question for Clarification Asking a teacher or other native speaker for repetition,

paraphrasing, explanation, and/or examplesRole-playing Pretending to be somebody else and using the language for

the situation you are in

Creative StrategyCreative Strategy

Brainstorming Thinking of as many new words and ideas as you can

Oxford also draws a distinction between direct strategies and indirect strategies. Direct

strategies are specific procedures that learners can use to internalize the language. Indirect

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strategies, on the other hand, include things such as evaluating ones learning, and

cooperating with others.

DIRECT STRATEGIES:

Memory Strategies

A. Creating mental linkages 1. Grouping

2. Associating/ elaborating

3. placing new words into a context

B. Applying images and sounds 1. Using imagery

2. Semantic mapping3. Using key words

4. Representing sounds in memory

C. Reviewing well 1. Structured reviewing

D. Employing action 1. Using physical responses or sensation

2. Using mechanical techniques

Cognitive Strategies

A. Practicing 1. Repeating2. Formally practicing with sounds and

writing systems

3. Recognizing and using formulas and

patterns

4. Recombining

5. Practicing naturalistically

B. Receiving and sending

messages

1. Getting the idea quickly

2. Using resources for receiving and sending

messages

C. Analyzing and reasoning 1. Reasoning deductively

2. Analyzing expressions

3. Analyzing contrastively (across languages)

4. Translating

5. Transferring

D. Creating structure for input & 1. Taking notes2. Summarizing

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output 3. Highlighting

Compensation Strategies

A. Guessing intelligently 1. Using linguistic clues

2. Using other cluesB. Overcoming limitations in speaking and

writing

1. Switching to the mother tongue

2. Getting help

3. Using mime or gesture

4. Avoiding communication partially or

totally

5. Selecting the topic

6. Adjusting or approximating the

message

7. Coining words

8. Using a circumlocution or

synonym

INDIRECT STRATEGIES:

Metacognitive Strategies

A. Centering your learning 1.Overviewing and linking with already

known material

2. paying attention

3. Delaying speech production to focus on

listening

B. Arranging and planning your

learning

1. Finding out about language learning

2. Organizing

3. Setting goals and objectives

4. Identifying the purposes of a language ask

(purposeful listening/ reading/ speaking/

writing)

5. Planning for a language task

6. Seeking practice opportunities

C. Evaluating your learning 1. Self-monitoring2. Self-evaluating

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Affective Strategies

A. Lowering your anxiety 1. Using progressive relaxation, deep

breathing, or meditation

2. Using music

3. Using laughter

B. Encouraging yourself 1. Making positive statements

2. Taking risks wisely

3. Rewarding yourself

C. Taking your emotional

temperature

1. Listening to your body

2. Using a checklist

3. Writing a language learning diary

4. Discussing your feeling with

someone else

Social Strategies

A. Asking questions 1. Asking for clarification or

verification

2. Asking for correction

B. Cooperating 1. Cooperating with others

2. Cooperating with proficient users

of the new language

C. Empathizing with others 1. Developing cultural

understanding

2. Becoming aware of others

thoughts and feelings

(2) Teaching Strategies:

Teachers will have different teaching strategies when they have different teaching

purposes. For example, when teachers teach listening, speaking, reading, writing,

vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, teachers may have different strategies to cope with the

teaching problems.

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Besides, teachers of languages often fail to recognize that different teaching takes

place according to certain dimensions or variables. The kind of difference that occurs is

sometimes methodological, sometimes out of pace and intensity, sometimes a question of

entire pedagogical outlook. Owing to these variables, teachers must have various teaching

strategies. These variables are:

Pupil age Different teaching is a appropriate to young children,

adolescents, and adults

Level of proficiency Different teaching is appropriate for beginners,

intermediate level, and advanced level learners

Educational framework Different teaching is required in a context general

education, or acquiring a practical command, culture-

free, and of special-purpose learning, e.g., vocational or

educational ends

Learner volition Different teaching may sometimes appropriate, depending

on whether the learner is a volunteer or a nonvolunteer

Language of instruction Different teaching is required if the foreign language

instruction is carried out in the mother tongue, or in the

target language itself, or in some other foreign language

Target language status Different teaching is indicated depending on whether the

language being learned has the status, in the situation

where it is being learned, of a second language or a foreign

language

The successful use of appropriate teaching strategies often helps teachers increase

students proficiency and greater self-confidence. Teachers can integrate the teaching

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strategies with the learning strategies and conduct simulations, games, and other interactive

tasks. The following rules of teaching strategies can be provided to teachers when they

integrate strategy training into classroom activities:

1. Identify students needs to determine what strategies they are currently using, how

effective the strategies are, and how they can be improved.

2. Choose relevant strategies to be taught.

3. Determine how best to integrate strategy training into regular classroom activities.

4. Consider students motivations and attitudes about themselves as learners and about

learning new ways to learn.

5. Prepare materials and activities.

6. Conduct completely informed training, in which students learn and practice new

strategies, learn why the strategies are important, learn to evaluate their use of the

strategies, and learn how to apply them in new situations.

7. Evaluate the strategy training.

8. Revise the strategy training procedure for the next set of strategies to be taught.

When teachers instruct their students, there will be some conflicts between the

teaching styles and the learning styles. Actually, students whose learning styles resemble

the teachers are more likely to achieve good grades than are students with opposing styles,

who may drop the course or even discontinue studying the language. There are several

teaching strategies for teachers to deal with such conflicts:

1. Assess students and teachers styles and use this information to understand classroom

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dynamics.

2. Change teachers teaching behavior. Teachers can orient their teaching styles to meet

their students needs by providing a variety of multisensory, abstract, and concrete

learning activities that appeal to different learning styles.

3. Change learners behavior. Language learners use their style preference to their own

advantage. Learners can benefit when teachers realize this and when teachers provide

opportunities for students to move beyond theirstylistic comfort zone through the

use of strategies with which they might not initially comfortable.

4. Change the way students work in groups in the classroom. Teachers can use the

principles of cooperative learning in grouping students for interactive work.

5. Change the curriculum. Teachers might organize lessons as a series of activities or

episodes, each with a different objective and style.

6. Change the way style conflicts are viewed. Teachers who encourage students to

become aware of learning style preferences help promote flexibility and openness to

the use of many styles.

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II. What is the significance of the studies of learning strategies and the teaching strategies?

Do the strategies mean anything to L2 teaching?

According to Rebecca Oxford, language learning strategies

contribute to the main goal, communicative competence

allow learners to become more self-directed

expand the role of teachers

are problem oriented

are specific actions taken by the learner

involve many actions taken by the learner

support learning both directly and indirectly

are not always observable

are often conscious

can be taught

are flexible

are influenced by a variety of factors

According to David Nunan, the learners could be categorized by type. Learner

types and their preferences are set as follows:

Type 1 Concrete learners

These learners tend to like games, pictures, films, video, using cassettes, talking in pairs,

and practicing English outside class.

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Type 2 Analytical learners

These learners like studying grammar, studying English books and reading newspapers,

studying alone, finding their own mistakes, and working on problems set by the teacher.

Type 3 Communicative learners

These students like to learn by watching, listening to native speakers, talking to friends in

English and watching television in English, using English out of class in stores, trains, and

so on, learning new words by hearing them, and learning by conversations.

Type 4 Authority-oriented learners

These learners prefer the teacher to explain everything, like to have their own textbook, to

write everything in a notebook, to study grammar, learn by reading, and learn new words by

seeing them.

And the characteristics of good learners are as follows:

They can find their own way.

They can organize information about language.

They are creative and experiment with language.

They can make their own opportunities, and find strategies for getting practice in using

the language inside and outside the classroom.

They can learn to live with uncertainty and develop strategies for making sense of the

target language without wanting to understand every word.

They can use mnemonics (rhymes, word associations, and so forth) to recall what has

been learned.

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They can make errors work.

They can use linguistic knowledge, including knowledge of their first language in

mastering a second language.

They can let the context (extralinguistic knowledge and knowledge of the world) help

them in comprehension.

They can learn to make intelligent guesses.

They can learn chunks of language as wholes and formalized routines to help them

perform beyond their competence

They can learn production techniques (eg., techniques for keeping conversation going)

They can learn different styles of speech and writing and learn to vary their language

according to formality of the situation.

Knowledge is important for every learner. If learners can be conscious of the process

underlying the learning that they are involved in, then learning will be more effective.

Explicit strategy training, coupled with thinking about how one goes about learning, and

experimenting with different strategies, can lead to more effective learning. Learning

strategies are important for learners because of two reasons. In the first place, strategies are

tools for active, self-directed involvement, which is essential for developing communicative

competence. Secondly, learners who have developed appropriate learning strategies have

great self-confidence and learn more effectively.

Moreover, these studies of learning strategies and teaching strategies make teachers be

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able to identify the learning types of their students and teach teachers how to use the

appropriate ways to instruct their students. Besides, such studies show a lot of ways to

teachers so that teachers can teach students more effectively how to use strategies in order

to help them in the language learning process.

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III. How do the learning strategies and the teaching strategies correspond to each other?

Teaching can really affect learning. There are those who deny this viewpoint, and

who regard the effects of teaching as being either negligible, counter-productive, or

uncontrollable; and who in consequence conceive the function of a teacher as being limited

to a combination of language informant, attention-getter and pupil-minder. There is indeed

a great deal of low-grade language teaching throughout the world, to which these

limitations may apply to varying degrees. Many institutionalized programs produce

average levels achievement so low as to invite the criticism that simple contact with

speakers of the language might at least do no worse. But the undoubted existence of

inferior language teaching in no way obscures the existenceequally real, but often

overlookedof superior language teaching, in which learners achieve high levels of

command of languages in direct response to deliberate schemes of learning and teaching.

In the classroom, teachers can encourage successful subconscious strategy

employment through their choice, among several options, of classroom techniques that

enhance strategy building. Extending the ten commandments into classroom activities,

suggestions for building strategic competence emerge.

TEACHERS VERSION LEARNER S VERSION

1. Lower inhibitions Fear not!

2. Encourage risk-taking Dive in

3. Build self-confidence Believe in yourself

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4. Develop intrinsic motivation Seize the day

5. Engage in cooperative learning Love thy neighbor

6. Use right-brain processes Get the BIG picture

7. Promote ambiguity tolerance Cope with the chaos

8. Practice intuition Go with your hunches

9. Process error feedback Make mistakes work FOR you

10. Set personal goals Set your own goals

1. to lower inhibitions: play guessing games and communication games; do roles

plays and skits; sing songs; use plenty of group work; laugh with your students;

have them share their fears in small groups.

2. to encourage risk taking: praise students for making sincere efforts to try out

language; use fluency exercises where errors are not corrected at that time; give

outside-of-class assignments to speak or write or otherwise try out the language

3. to build students

self-confidence: tell students explicitly (verbally and

nonverbally) that you do indeed believe in them; have them make lists of their

strengths, of what they know or have accomplished so far in the course

4. to help them to develop intrinsic motivation: remind them explicitly about the

rewards for learning English; describe(or have students look up) jobs that require

English; play down the final examination in favor of helping students to see

rewards for themselves beyond the final exam.

5. to promote cooperative learning: direct students to share their knowledge; play

down competition among students; get your class to think of themselves as a

team; do a considerable amount of small group work.

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6. to encourage them to use right-brain processing: use movies and tapes in

class; have them read passages rapidly; do skimming exercises; do rapid free

writes; do oral fluency exercises where the object is to get students to talk (or

write) a lot without being corrected.

7. to promote ambiguity tolerance: encourage students to ask you, and each other,

questions when they dont understand something; keep your theoretical

explanations very simple and belief; deal with just a few rules at a time;

occasionally you can resort to translation into a native language to clarify a word

or meaning.

8. to help them use their intuition: praise students for good guesses; do not always

give explanations of errorslet a correction suffice; correct only selected errors,

preferably just those that interfere with learning.

9. to get students to make their mistakes work FOR them: tape record students

oral production and get them to identify errors; let students catch and correct

form; encourage students to make lists of their common errors and to work on

them on their own.

10. to get students to set their own goals: explicitly encourage or direct students to

go beyond the classroom goals; have them make lists of what they will

accomplish on their own in a particular week; get students to make specific time

commitments at home to study the language; give extra credit work.

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what are the learning strategies

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