LEARNING STRATEGIES SUMMARY

Authors LS definitions

Rubin (1975, 1987) Techniques or devices which a learner may use to acquire second language knowledge. What learners do to learn and do to regulate their learning (1987:19) OMalley and Learning strategies are the special thoughts or behaviours that individuals use to Chamot (1990) help them comprehend, learn, or retain new information. Weinstein and the way in which the learner selects, acquirers, organizes, or integrates new Mayer (1986) knowledge. Tarone (1981) LS are attempts to develop linguistic and sociolinguistic competence in the target language Oxford (1990) ... operations employed by the learner to aid the acquisition, storage, retrieval, and use of information. Learning strategies are specific actions taken by the learner to make learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective, and more transferrable to new situations. Dansereau (1985) special thoughts or behaviours that learners use to help them comprehend, retain and/or use the information Stern (1992) Learning Strategy: learners engage in activities to achieve certain goals,. a choice of procedures, ... some form of long term planning.

The general features of language learning strategies, according to Oxford (1990), are the following: 1. Contribute to the main goal: communicative competence. For example, metacognitive strategies help learners to regulate their cognition and to focus, plan and evaluate their progress. Affective strategies develop self-confidence and perseverance needed to become involved in language learning situations. Social strategies increase interaction and empathy in communication. 2. Allow learners to become more self-directed. Learners do not need to have the teacher around to guide them all the time. They are trained to rely more on themselves and be more responsible for their learning. They are expected to gain more confidence, involvement and proficiency. 3. Expand the role of teachers. The traditional roles of teachers as authority figures, managers and directors of learning, leaders, controllers and evaluators are changed into a new direction to leave space to a new teacher who acts as facilitator, helper, guide, consultant, adviser and co-communicator. 4. Are problem-oriented. LS are tools which are used because theres a problem to solve, a task to accomplish, an objective to meet. 5. Are specific actions taken by the learner. LS are specific actions or behaviours accomplished by the students to enhance their learning. Examples of these actions are: taking notes, planning for a language task, self-evaluating, etc. 6. Involve many aspects of the learner, not just the cognitive. LS are not restricted to cognitive functions. They also include metacognitive functions like planning, evaluating, and arranging ones own learning, and emotional and affective functions as well. 7. Support learning both directly and indirectly. Some LS involve direct learning, but others like metacognitive, social or affective strategies have an indirect effect.

8. Are not always observable. Some LS are not observable to the human eye. For example, the act of making mental associations cannot be seen. So, we need the learners cooperation to explore the non-observable LS. 9. Are often conscious. LS are often conscious, but as Oxford suggests, after a certain amount of practice and use they may act in a automatic or subconscious way. 10. Can be taught. Another important hypothesis stated by Oxford is that LS are easy to teach and modify through strategy training. This training is most effective when students learn why and when specific strategies are important, how to use these strategies and how to transfer them to new situations. 11. Are flexible. LS are not always found in predictable sequences. There is a great deal of individuality in the way learners choose, combine and sequence strategies. 12. Are influenced by a variety of factors. Many factors affect the choice of strategies: degree of awareness, stage of leaning, teacher expectations, age, sex, general learning style, personality traits, motivation level, etc. Some authors have proved that learning strategies develop with age, are used with increasing sophistication by older students, result in improved task performance and can be taught (Oxford, 1990; OMalley and Chamot (1990). Some learning strategies are:
A. METACOGNITIVE STRATEGIES They involve thinking about the learning process, planning for learning, monitoring the learning task, and evaluating how well one has learned. 1. Planning: Previewing the organizing concept or principle of an anticipated learning task (advance organization); proposing strategies for handling an upcoming task; generating a plan for the parts, sequence, main ideas, or language functions to be used in handling a task. 2. Directed attention: Deciding in advance to attend in general to a learning task and to ignore irrelevant distractors; maintaining attention during task execution. 3. Selective attention: Deciding in advance to attend to specific aspects of language input or situational details to assist in performance of a task; attending to specific aspects of language input during task execution. 4. Self-management: Understanding the conditions that help one successfully accomplish language tasks and arranging for the presence of those conditions; controlling one's language performance to maximize use of what is already known. 5. Self-monitoring: Checking, verifying, or correcting one's comprehension or performance in the course of language task. 6. Problem identification: Explicitily identifying the central points needing resolution in a task or identifying an aspect of the task that hinders its succesful completion. 7. Self-evaluation: Checking the outcomes of one's own language performance against an internal measure of completeness and accuracy; checking one's language repertoire, strategy use, or ability to perform the task at hand. B. COGNITIVE STRATEGIES They involve interacting with the material to be learned, manipulating the material mentally or physically, or applying a specific technique to a learning task. 1. Repetition: Imitating a language model, including overt practice and silent rehearsal. 2. Resourcing: Using available reference sources of information about the target language, including dictionaries, textbooks, and prior work. 3. Grouping: Ordering, classifying, or labelling material used in a language task based on common attributes; recalling information based on grouping previously done. 4. Note taking: Writing down key words and concepts in abbreviated verbal, graphic, or numerical form to assist performance of language task.

5. Deduction/Induction: Conciously applying learned or self-developed rules to produce or understand the target language. 6. Substitution: Selecting alternative approaches, revised plans, or different words or phrases to accomplish a language task. 7. Elaboration: Relating new information to prior knowledge; relating different parts of new information to each other; making meaningful personal associations to information presented, in the following ways: a. Personal elaborations: making judgements about or reacting personally to the material presented. b. World elaboration: Using knowledge gained from experience in the world. c. Academic elaboration: Using knowledge gained in academic situations. d. Between parts elaboration: Relating parts of the task to each other. e. Question elaboration: Using a combination of questions and world knowledge to brainstorm logical solutions to a task. f. Sel-evaluative elaboration: Judging self in relation to materials. g. Creative elaboration: making up a story line, or adopting a clever perspective. h. Imagery: Using mental or actual pictures or visuals to represent information; coded as a separate category, but viewed as a form of elaboration. 8. Summarizing: Making a mental, oral, or written summary of language and information presented in a task. 9. Translation: Rendering ideas from one language to another in a relatively verbatim manner. 10. Transfer: Using previously acquired linguistic knowledge to facilitate a language task. 11. Inferencing: Using available information to guess the meanings or usage of unfamiliar language items associated with a language task, to predict outcomes, or to fill in missing information.

C. SOCIAL AND AFFECTIVE STRATEGIES: They involve interacting with another person to assist learning or using affective control to assist a learning task.

1. Questioning for clarification: Asking for explanation, verification, rephrasing, or examples about the material; asking for clarification or verification about the task; posing questions to the self. 2. Cooperation: Working together with peers to solve a problem, pool information, check a learning task, model a language activity, or get feedback on oral or written performance. 3. Self-talk: Reducing anxiety by using mental techniques that make one feel competent to do a learning task. 4. Self-reinforcement: Providing personal motivation by arranging rewards for oneself when a language learning activity has been successfully completed.

OMalley and Chamot research work has also provided some very important conclusions: Foreign language (FL) students and ESL students showed similar patterns of metacognitive and cognitive strategy use. Students at all levels reported using far more cognitive strategies than metacognitive ones. In metacognitive strategy use FL students predominantly reported using planning strategies, such as selective attention, organizational planning, and selfmanagement. In cognitive strategy use, students at the beginning level of language study relied most on repetition, translation and transfer, whereas more advanced students relied most on inferencing. Use of social and affective strategies was reported much less frequently than use of metacognitive strategies.

FL students of all ability levels were found to use learning strategies. More effective students used learning strategies more often and had a wider repertoire of learning strategies than did less effective students. Strategies which involve simple operations on linguistic material, such as repetition and memorization, or the use of formulaic language, seem to be the first acquired and are the most frequently used in secondary school classrooms (O'Malley et al. 1985a). More sophisticated strategies such as elaboration, monitoring, or grouping, etc. which involves the transformation on material emerge later and are employed less frequently. Perhaps the simpler strategies are available to all and training can influence their frequency and appropriateness of use. The more complex strategies might not be available to everyone, and their use may have to be explicitly taught to some students. The use of metacognitive strategies, the most exciting development in recent strategy research, may not translate directly into easy application, since such strategies may be the most demanding of all to teach to students and implement effectively. The use of strategies reported by FL students is highly related to the type of instruction they received in classrooms as cognitive strategies are directly related to specific learning tasks. For example, in a classroom in which grammar is emphasized, successful students would usededuction as a strategy in applying rules to formulate correct sentences, and in a classroom in which vocabulary acquisition or reading for details is emphasized, students would find translation as a strategy to be effective. That brings into prominence the role of teachers and the type of instruction students are involved in. One consequence to be drawn from that is the importance of the role played by teachers. Strategy training can have a direct influence on performance. Possibly the most trainable strategies are those which have the quickest return and the less trainable strategies are those associated with aspects of language learning and cognitive processes, and whose effects can only be observed if they are used over extended periods of time.

taken from http://www.ugr.es/~dmadrid/Publicaciones/Learning%20Strategies.htm