Student Learning Strategies

LEARNING STRATEGIES All learners must have their learning strategies in place in order for them to achieve their goals. It is appropriate that they know how they learn and what they must do to reach their goals. Instructors need to be aware of what learning strategies are out there. They also need to know what strategies their students employ. They need to know how to integrate learning strategies into instructions to sensitize the students on what learning strategies are and hence develop their own strategies. Instructors will be able to provide counsel to those students with difficulties in mastering concepts that are taught to them. Different researchers through their studies have developed different definitions for learning strategies.

O’Malley et al (1985, p. 22) commented that the “considerable confusion” surrounds the term. Some writers use the terminology such as learning behaviors (Politzer and McGroarty, 1985; Wesche, 1977), tactics (Seliger, 1984), and techniques (Stern, 1992). The preferred solution to the problem is simply to refer to all of these as strategies. Oxford, however explained that a strategy is positive and helpful to a learner if it relates well to the L2 and FL task at hand, if it fits the student’s learning style preferences to one degree or another, and the student uses the strategy effectively and links it with other relevant strategies. These types of strategies “make learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective, and more transferable to new situations” (Oxford, 1990, p.8). These researchers also do not agree as to whether strategies need to be conscious or unconscious in other for them to be strategies. Most believe that learning strategies are intentional and are consciously controlled by the learner, hence, there is a conscious movement toward the language goal (Bialystok, 1990; Oxford, 1990, 1996a). These top researchers also use different terms when referring to LS or LLS. The terms “learner strategies” (Wendin & Rubin, 1987), others use “learning strategies” (O’Malley & Chamot, 1990; Chamot & O’Malley, 1994). Oxford (1990a, 1996) use “language

(Oxford, 1990a, p. 9). Self-report surveys, observations, interviews, learner journals, dialogue journals, think-aloud techniques are some of the assessment tools used in the past for uncovering the strategies used by L2 and FL students. However, with the advent of the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning, it became the most widely used survey. This has been translated into more than 20 languages. These six groups of language learning strategies are reflected in the SILL developed and used by Oxford and others for a great deal of research in the learning strategies domain. The SILL is a self-report survey of strategies for L2 and FL learning. There are a lot of advantages attached to the use of SILL. Students could use the SILL to assess their own use of L2/FL strategies in order to determine if their strategies are the most appropriate for their goals and requirements. Many teachers like myself, who do not know what their students learning strategies are, could benefit from the use of SILL. Teachers who know these strategies can use them to plan the curriculum and plan and present instructions. Teachers can bring the strategies to the learner’s situation and