STRATEGIES-BASED

INSTRUCTION
Reporter: Mrs. Roqueza L. Rojas
STRATEGIES-BASED INSTRUCTION
The persistent use of a whole battery of strategies for language learning
Sometimes these strategies are subconciously applied
Often learners have achieved their goals through concious, systematic application
of a battery of strategies
A learner-centered approach to teaching that has two major components:
1.) students are explicitly taught how, when and why strategies
can be used to facilitate language learning and language use tasks
2.) strategies are integrated into everyday class materials
GOALS OF STRATEGIES-BASED
INSTRUCTION
To help learners become more responsible for their efforts to learn
and use the target language
To help learners become more effective learners by allowing them to
individualize the language learning experience
STRATEGIC INVESTMENT
Teachers might overlook their mission of enabling learners to
eventually become independent, autonomous
Students need to have the necessary strategic competence for the
give and take of meaningful communication
BUILDING STRATEGIC TECHNIQUE
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 try out language; use fluency
exercises where errors are not corrected at that time; give outside-of-class assignments to speak or write or
otherwise use 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.
4. To promote cooperative learning: direct students to share their knowledge; play down competition among
students; get your class to think of themselves as a team; do a considerable amount of small-group work.
5. To encourage them to use right-brain processing: use movies and tapes in class; have them read passages
rapidly; do skimming exercises; do rapid “free-writes” ; do oral fluency exercises where the object is to get
students to talk (or write) a lot without being corrected
6. To promote ambiguity tolerance: encourage students to ask you and each other, questions when they
don’t understand something; keep your theoritical explanations very simple and brief
; deal with just few rules at a time; occasionally resort to translation into a native language to clarify a word or
meaning.
7. To help them use their intuition: praise students for good guesses; do not always give explanations of errors
-let a correction suffice; correct only selected errors, preferably just those that interfere with learning.
8.To get students to make their mistakes work FOR them: tape record students’ oral production and get them
to identify errors; let students catch and correct each other’s errors- do not always give them the correct form;
encourage them to make lists of their common errors and to work on them on their own.
9. To get students to set their own goals: explicitly encourage or direct students to go beyond the classroom
goals; have them make lists of what they will accomplish on their own in a particular week; get students to
make specific time commitment at home to study the language ; give “extra credit” work
GOOD LANGUAGE LEARNERS
By Joan Rubin and Irene Thompson
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
5. learn to live with uncertainty
6. use mnemonics and other memory strategies
7. make errors work for them
8. use linguistic knowledge
9. use contextual cues to help them in comprehension
10. learn to make intellectual guesses
11. learn chunks to help them perform “beyond their competence”
12. learn different styles of speech & writing & vary their language according to the formality of the situation
STYLES OF SUCCESSFUL LANGUAGE
LEARNING
• STYLES: the consistent and enduring traits, tendencies or preferences that may differentiate you from others
• STRATEGIES: specific methods of approaching a problem or task for controlling and manipulating certain
information
• successful second language learners are usually people who know how to manipulate style as well as
strategy
• the number of personality
( extroversion, self-esteem, anxiety ) and cognitive styles ( left/right brain orientation, ambiguity tolerance,
field sensitivity} that lead toward successful learning in finite.
DEVELOPING SELF-AWARENESS OF
STYLES
1. Informal self-checklists
2. Formal personality and cognitive style tests
• any self-check test is a product of test-taker’s own self image
• their responses may reflect a bit of self-flattery
3. Reading, lectures and discussion
4. Encouraging “good language learner behavior”
•through frequent impromptu reminders of rules for good language learning and encouragement of discussion
or clarification
HOW TO TEACH STRATEGIES IN THE
CLASSROOM
• Direct or cognitive strategies
- learners apply directly to the language itself
• Indirect or metacognitive strategies
- learners manage or control their own learning process
1. Teach strategies through interactive technique
ex. information-gap listening technique
2. Use compensatory technique
3. Administer a strategy inventory
4. Make use of impromptu teacher-initiated advice
- seize the opportunity to teach your students how to learn
SBI CAN WORK WELL IF THE
STUDENTS:
Understand the strategy itself
Perceive it to be effective
Do not consider its implementation to be overly difficult
“PACKAGED” MODELS OF SBI
1. Text-book -embedded instruction
2. Adjunct self-help guides
3. Learning centers