How To Teach Second Language Learning

1. Explaining the saying

To me this saying could apply for any human process which implies a previous explanation or experience to be done. The famous proverb probably was used to explain to others about a basic concept of feeding and survival. Language learning is a process which needs both experience and explanation to be successful. But when referring to ‘give a man a fish…’ I associate it with instruction, and ‘…teach them how to fish…’ it is autonomous or independent learning. Anyway, teaching and learning how to fish, and teaching and learning a second language have really different processes which demand totally different strategies, techniques and approaches. Stating this we can quote Oxford (1998): “Students who can manage their learning

Therefore, positive and negative aspects can only be determined by each teacher’s principles and opinions on what he considers an effective implementation of strategy instruction. Some teachers comprehend it as offering learners specific techniques and then making them practice this techniques in intended tasks while others believe in helping students to find their own learning styles. Anyway, I agree with Cohen (1998: 69) “The goal of strategy training is to explicitly teach students how, when and why strategies can be used to facilitate their efforts at learning and using a foreign

This approach has generated a great deal of knowledge and theories, but it has not solved several doubts and questions yet. Even the process of second language acquisition still has lots of unsolved concerns. In fact, although humans seem to acquire the mother tongue incorporating grammatical elements without a direct instruction or an apparent predesigned planning and throughout a natural process of semantic-functional assimilation; it is not the same in terms of second language learning. In this second case, although learning strategies and styles that individuals use play a relevant role in the teaching-learning process, there are still a lot of questions to solve. The processes that differentiate good students from those who are not such good, have deserved the attention of researchers for some time. Possibly the differences between them do not lie on, as we believe or it seems, the strategies in use, but more on personal learning styles or on the way learners reflect on the process of advance, correction and feedback obtained from personal success and