Learning Strategies

The goal of teaching strategies is to create autonomous learners, learners who can learn by themselves inside and outside the classroom. Research and classroom practices are evolving in many directions to try to better understand and facilitate learning for students of all ages. In general, successful language learners tend to select strategies that work well together, according to the requirements of the language task. These learners can easily explain the strategies they use and why they use them.

Module Focus: Introduction

In this module, we will focus on some key features of two classes of learning strategies:

• Language learning and communication strategies.
• Cognitive and metacognitive strategies.

If we accept that cognition is “knowing” or “learning,” then we can say that metacognition is developing an awareness of and an ability to monitor that learning process. We will see that there is, in fact, a lot of overlap between all of these strategies.

Teachers can help students develop effective strategies by:

1. Identifying students' current learning strategies through surveys, interviews, or other means.
2. Helping individual students understand which strategies work best for them.
3. Assisting students in developing a set of strategies that work well together, rather than using a scattered approach.

Language Learning and Communication Strategies

Some characteristics of successful self‐directed language learners are that they:

• Have a strong drive, or motivation, to communicate.
• They are willing to take risks, and make mistakes.
• They recognize language and communication patterns.
• They use guessing and prediction strategies.
• They pay attention to meaning.
• They monitor and self‐correct their own speech.
• They practice with the language at every opportunity.
• And, over time, they learn to think—and perhaps even dream‐‐in the target language, English.

Summary

A teacher should be able to incorporate many learning and metacognitive strategies in her teaching. Clearly, the teacher should understand her students' current strengths, needs, and challenges.

Some of the learning strategies that a teacher should support in the classroom include:

1. Those for language‐specific skills (for example, speaking, listening, reading, and writing).
2. Those for cognition and metacognition (for example, schema activation, transfer of knowledge, reflection, and so on).
3. And, those that involve affective factors such as motivation, confidence, and a trusting atmosphere to encourage risk‐taking and participation.

Module Summary

• Language learning and communication strategies.
• And, cognitive and metacognitive strategies.
• With strategy training, teachers should help students develop affective and social strategies, as well as intellectually related strategies, based on their individual learning styles, current strategy use, and specific goals.
• See the manual for readings and more information on this and other topics related to Learning Strategies.

to get a checklist for doing this step, click the following link: learning strategy.

This information is taken from “Shaping the Way We Teach English”, module 7.