STRATEGIES-BASED INSTRUCTION, chapter 16

OTABEK UMIROV 1973045

OBJECTIVES
 recognize the importance of students` understanding various tricks,
gimmicks, and techniques for learning a language--embodying a knack
for learning
 appreciate the value of fostering in students a sense of self-awareness of
their styles and preferences
 understand the principle of strategic investment within practical
classroom contexts
 identify a number of styles within students and their assets and liabilities
in a given task or lesson
 apply the concept of leading students from awareness (of styles) to
action (in the form of using strategies)
STRATEGIC INVESTMENT
In recent years language-teaching methodology has seen a dramatic increase in
attention to what I like to call the strategic investment that learners can make in their
own learning process. A language is probably the most complex set of skills one could
ever seek to acquire; therefore, an investment is necessary in the form of developing
multiple layers of strategies for getting that language into one's brain.
In this chapter we probe its implications for your teaching methodology in
the classroom, specifically, how your language classroom techniques can encourage,
build, and sustain effective language-learning strategies in your students. This facet
of language teaching has come to be known as strategies-based instruction (SBl).
In an era of communicative, interactive, learner-centered teaching, SBI simply cannot be overlooked. All
too often, language teachers are so consumed with the "delivery" of language to their students that they
neglect to spend some effort preparing learners to "receive" the language. And students, mostly unaware
of the tricks of successful language learning, simply do whatever the teacher tells them to do, having no
means to question the wisdom thereof. In an effort to fill class hours with fascinating material, teachers
might overlook their mission of enabling learners to eventually become independent of classrooms-that
is, to become autonomous learners.

One of your principal goals as an interactive language teacher is to equip your students with a sense of
what successful language learners do to achieve success and to aid them in developing their own unique,
individual pathways to success. Because by definition interaction is unrehearsed, mostly unplanned
discourse, students need to have the necessary strategic competence to hold their own in the give and take
of meaningful communication.
GOOD LANGUAGE LEARNERS
SBI had its early roots in studies of "good" language learners. Research in this area tended first to
identify certain successful language learners and then to extract~through tests of psycholinguistic factors,
interviews, and other data analysis-relevant factors believed tocontribute to their success. Some
generalizations were drawn by Joan Rubin and Irene Thompson (1982) that will give you a sense of the
flavor of this line of research. Good language learners:
1. find their own way, taking charge of their learning.
2. organize information about language.
3. are creative, developing a "feel" for the language by experimenting with its grammar and words.
4. make their own opportunities for practice in using the language inside and outside the classroom.
5. learn to live with uncertainty by not getting flustered and by continuing to talk or listen without
understanding every word.
6. use mnemonics and other memory strategies to recall what has been learned.
7. make errors work for them and not against them.
8. use linguistic knowledge, including knowledge of their first language, in learning a second language.
9. use contextual cues to help them in comprehension.
10. learn to make intelligent guesses.
11. learn chunks of language as wholes and formalized routines to help them perform "beyond their
competence."
12. learn certain tricks that help to keep conversations going.
13. learn certain production strategies to fill in gaps in their own competence.
14. learn different styles of speech and writing and learn to vary their language
according to the formality of the situation.
 It is important to remember that some of the above characteristics are not
based on empirical findings, but rather on the collective observations of teachers
and learners themselves. Therefore, do not assume that all successful learners
exhibit all of these characteristics.
STYLES OF SUCCESSFUL LANGUAGE LEARNING

Styles, whether related to personality (such as extroversion, self-esteem, anxiety) or to cognition (such as
left/right-brain orientation, ambiguity tolerance, field sensitivity) characterize the consistent and enduring
traits, tendencies, or preferences that may differentiate you from another person. You might, for example,
tend to be extroverted or right-brain oriented (while someone else might be introverted and left-brain
oriented). These styles are an appropriate characterization of how you behave in general, even though
you may for a multitude of (conscious or subconscious) reasons adopt more introverted or left-brain
behavior in specific contexts.
Strategies, on the other hand, are specific methods of approaching a problem or task, modes of operation
for achieving a particular end, or planned designs for controlling and manipulating certain information.
Strategies vary widely within an individual, while styles are more constant and predictable. You may
almost simultaneously utilize a dozen strategies for figuring out what someone just said to you, for
example. You may use strategies of "playback" (imagine an instant taped replay of the conversation), key
word identification, attention to nonverbal cue(s), attention to context, dictionary look-up, grammatical
analysis, numerous direct requests for repetition, rephraSing, word definition, or turning to someone else
for interpretation.
 AWARENESS AND ACTION
AWARENESS STYLES
 CULTURE ACTION STRATEGIES
 SELF-EFFICACY  DIRECT STRATEGIES
 SOCIALIZATION  METACOGNITIVE STRATEGIES
 COGNITIVE STYLES  SOCIOAFFECTIVE STRATEGIES
 LEARNING STYLES
 SKILL-SPECIFIC STRATEGIES
 PERSONALITY VARIABLES
 LANGUAGE EGO  PROFICIENCY-BASED STRATEGIES
 INTELLIGENCE  COMPENSATORY STRATEGIES
 BELIEFS  MAXIMISING STYLE
ADVANTAGES
 DEVELOPING STUDENT SELF-AWARENESS OF STYLES
1. INFORMAL SELF CHECKLISTS
One effective way to instill student awareness of successful styles is through an informal self-checklist (you
might devise it yourself) that students fill out and then discuss. Such checklists are usually not formally scored or
tallied; rather, they serve as focal points for discussion and enlightenment. You could adapt the following
procedure for use in your classroom:
1. Hand out checklists to each student and tell them to fill them in on their own.
2. When they finish, put students into groups of four. Their objective is to compare answers, to justify individual
responses, and to determine if anyone feels compelled to change his or her response category after discussion.
The ultimate objective is to get students to talk openly about their own styles.
3. In whole-class activity, groups can be asked to share any major agreements and disagreements. Direct this
discussion toward some conclusions about the best styles for successful language learning.
4. Summarize by explaining that no one side is necessarily good or bad, but that (a) if they are too dominant on
one side, they may profit from allowing the other side of a continuum to operate, and (b) that most learners tend
to lean too far to the right side of the chart, which is usually not the best learning
style.
• 2. FORMAL PERSONALITY AND COGNITIVE STYLE TESTS
If formal personality or cognitive style tests are available to you, you might try using them in your class-
but with caution! Often these tests are culturally biased, have difficult language, and need to be
interpreted with a grain of salt. Many tests designed for North American English speakers are loaded with
cultural references that learners from other countries may misinterpret. And if the language is too
difficult, your attempts to paraphrase may destroy a test's validity. Always remember that any self-check
test, however formal, is a product of a test-taker's own self-image; often they will simply want to see
themselves in a good light, and therefore their responses may reflect a bit of self-flattery.

3. READINGS, LECTURES, AND DISCUSSIONS

Yet another way of encouraging self·awareness of styles in your classroom is for you to assign occasional
readings, or give mini-lectures or presentations followed by discussions about successful learning styles.
4. ENCOURAGING GOOD LANGUAGE LEARNER BEHAVIOR

Yet another form of instilling self-awareness in students is through frequent impromptu reminders of
"rules" for good language learning and encouragement of discussion or clarification. Sometimes the little
comments you make here and there have the effect of subtly urging students to take charge of their own
destiny by understanding their own styles of learning and capitalizing on their abilities.

A set of successful styles for language learning might be appropriately capsulized in the form of ten rules
or "commandments," as I have on occasion facetiously called them. In Table 16.1, they are given in a
teacher's version and a learner's version. The former is stated in more technical terms; the latter uses
words and cliches designed to catch the attention of learners. The learners' version, in the right-hand
column with appropriate explanations, might be useful for a classroom bulletin board, for class
discussions, or for student journal writing topics.
TABLE 16.1 Ten Commandments" for good language learning
Teacher's Version
1. Lower inhibitions.
2. Encourage risk-taking.
3. Bui Id self-confidence.
4. Develop intrinsic motivation.
5. Engage in cooperative learning.
6. Use right-brain processes.
7. Promote ambiguity tolerance.
8. Practice intuition.
9. Process error feedback.
10. Set personal goals.
Learner's Version
Fear not!
Dive in.
Believe in yourself.
Seize the day.
Love thy neighbor.
Get the BIG picture.
Cope with the chaos.
Go with your hunches.
Make mistakes work FOR you.
Set your own goals.
HOW TO TEACH STRATEGIES IN THE CLASSROOM

Rebecca
Oxford (1990) provides the most comprehensive taxonomy of learning strategies currently available.
These strategies are divided into what have come to be known as direct or cognitive strategies, which
learners apply directly to the language itself, and indirect or metacognitive strategies, in which learners
manage or control their own learning process. Direct strategies include a number of different ways of
• remembering more effectively,
• using all your cognitive processes,
• compensating for missing knowledge.
Indirect strategies, according to Oxford's taxonomy, include
• organizing and evaluating your learning,
• managing your emotions,
• learning with others.
1. TEACH STRATEGIES THROUGH INTERACTIVE TECHNIQUES

One way to familiarize your students with this plethora of possible strategies is to promote the "ten
commandments" above through your own classroom techniques. Some techniques will be the ones you
would utilize anyway. Other techniques will perhaps be specifically geared toward building strategic
competence. Table 16.2 on page 270 offers some suggestions for creating an atmosphere in your
classroom in which students feel comfortable and are encouraged to develop their own strategies.
Table 14.2. Building strategic techniques
1. To lower inhibitions: play guessing games and communication games; do role-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 tryout language; use fluency
exercises where errors are not corrected at that time; give outsideof-class assignments to speak or write or
otherwise tryout 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.
ETC...
2. USE COMPENSATTORY TECHNIQUE

1. Low tolerance ofambiguity: brainstorming, retelling stories, role-play, paraphrasing, finding

synonyms, jigsaw techniques, skimming tasks
2. Excessive impulsiveness: making inferences, syntactic or semantic clue searches, scanning for specific
information, inductive rule generalization
3. Excessive reflectiveness/caution: small-group techniques, role-play, brainstorming, fluency techniques
4. Too much right-br~in dominance: syntactic or semantic clue searches, scanning for specific
information, proofreading, categorizing and clustering activities, information-gap techniques
5. Too much left-brain dominance: integrative language techniques, fluency
techniques, retelling stories, skimming tasks
 3. ADMINISTER A STRATEGY INVENTORY
Earlier in this chapter were some suggestions for using a self-checklist and formal style tests in the
classroom. Following the same format, you could introduce a strategy inventory. The best and most
comprehensive of such instruments is Rebecca Oxford's (1990) Strategy Inventory for Language Learning
(SILL), an extensive questionnaire covering (in its ESL version) fifty separate strategies in six major
categories. The SILL has now been used with learners in a number of different countries including the US,
and has proven to be exceptionally enlightening to learners as they are exposed, perhaps for the first time, to
so many different strategic options.

4. MAKE USE OF IMPROMPTU TEACHER-INITIATED ADVICE

Finally, as you may recall from the discussion of developing style awareness, learners can benefit greatly
from your daily attention to the many little tricks of the trade that you can pass on to them. Think back to
your own language learning experiences and note what it was that you now attribute your success (or
failure!) to, and pass these insights on. Did you use flash cards? Did you practice a lot? Did you see subtitled
movies? read books? pin rules and words up on your wall? When the appropriate moments occur in your
class, seize the opportunity to teach your students how to learn. By doing so you will increase their
opportunities for strategic investment in their learning process.
PACKAGED MODELS OF SBI
1. TEXTBOOK EMBEDDED INSTRUCTION
2. ADJUNCT SELF HELP GUIDES
3. LEARNING CENTERS
TO SUM UP
Interactive language teachers must not underestimate the importance of
getting students strategically invested in their language learning process.
Perhaps the most powerful principle of learning of all kinds is the Intrinsic
Motivation Principle. One of the best ways of getting students intrinsically
involved in their language learning is to offer them the opportunity to
develop their own set of strategies for success. Having thus invested their
time and effort into the learning of English, they can take responsibility for
a good deal of their own learning. This, in turn, generates more motivation
as they become autonomous learners.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION