I. Language Learner Strategy

II. Foreign Language Teaching Strategy

• Instructional Process of Vocabulary (Kataoka, 1998)
• Teaching strategy (Imamura, 1995)

III. Related Links:

• Foreign Language and Brain
  This sites introduces historical brain research, combined with a review of effective foreign language methodology and research. It provides a framework that teachers can utilize to incorporate brain-sensitive activities that foster memory storage and language retrieval. Recent research about the brain, general recommendations for classroom teaching and assorted activities are provided on this web site. Click HERE.
• Learning a Modern Foreign Language: Guidelines for Learners with Dyslexia
  This site summarizes the guidelines for learners with Dyslexia. Click HERE

Language Learning Strategy

It is important to know the learning strategies of language learners. The following sections briefly summarize the findings of Oxford (1990 & 2001), and O'Malley et. (1985). The research focuses on English-speaking students learning a foreign language and on non-English speakers learning English.

Oxford (2001) presents six categories of language learning strategies: cognitive, metacognitive, memory-related, compensatory, affective, and social (p. 359).

• Cognitive: practicing and repeating new words; deductive reasoning, translating, analyzing; taking notes, highlighting, summarizing
• Metacognitive: paying attention, organizing, setting goals and objectives, evaluating one’s own performance
• Memory-related: creating mental linkages, such as grouping and placing words in context; applying images and sounds to represent things in memory; structured reviewing; using mechanical techniques, such as physical response
• Compensatory: selecting a topic for discussion based on one’s knowledge of the language and shaping the discussion to avoid unknown vocabulary, guessing at words based on context, using gestures and coining words to communicate
• Affective: using music or laughter as part of the learning process, rewarding oneself, making positive statements about one’s own progress, discussing feelings
• Social: seeking correction, asking for clarification, working with peers, developing cultural understanding (Oxford 2001, pp. 363-365)

Some strategies are guided by exterior influences teachers, activities, interactions and others relate to the student’s personality, motivation, and knowledge about how to learn. Oxford’s 1990 publication, Language Learning Strategies: What Every Teacher Should Know, is designed to make teachers and students aware of language learning strategies and the various ways they can be used to facilitate language learning. In one section of the text, Oxford gives 19 different scenarios describing language learners with specific goals. The reader is to identify which language learning strategies could be used to accomplish the goal (Hancock, 2002). For example:

You are an English-speaking high school student learning Italian. You have a good sense of humor and enjoy jokes and cartoons. You decide to buy an Italian cookbook. It is about 100 pages long, full of cartoons. You want to read the book, understand the cartoons, and explain some of the cartoons to your friends who do not know Italian at all. Which language learning strategies do you need to use? (Oxford, 1990, p. 33)

For the above scenario, readers might identify the following strategies that could be used :

• Cognitive: Analyze the language of the text (see how the cartoons convey humor)
• Metacognitive: Set goals (decide how much to learn on your own and when to show the book to your friends)
• Memory-related: Place words in context (certain vocabulary will be used for cooking)
• Compensatory: Select which recipes or cartoons to focus on
• Affective: Use laughter (understand language through the cartoons)
• Social: Cooperate with peers (include your friends in your learning process)This activity can be used to teach awareness of language learning strategies and ways to use them.

O'Malley & Chamot maximal list of strategies: O'Malley, Chamot, Stewner-Manzanares, Kupper, & Rocco (1985)

A. Metacognitive strategies: 'higher order executive skills that may entail planning for, monitoring, or evaluating the success of a learning activity' (O'Malley & Chamot, 1990, 44)

• advance organisers: planning the learning activity in advance - "You review before you go into class".
• directed attention: deciding to concentrate on general aspects of a learning task.
• selective attention: deciding to pay attention to specific parts of the language input or the situation that will help learning.
• self-management: trying to arrange the appropriate conditions for learning - "I sit in the front of the class so I can see the teacher".
• advance preparation: planning the linguistic components for a forthcoming language task
• self-monitoring: checking one's performance as one speaks - "Sometimes I cut short a word because I realize I've said it wrong".
• delayed production: deliberately postponing speaking so that one may learn by listening "I talk when I have to, but I keep it short and hope I'll be understood".
• self-evaluation: checking how well one is doing against one's own standards
• self-reinforcement: giving oneself rewards for success

B. Cognitive strategies

• repetition: imitating other people's speech overtly or silently.
• resourcing: making use of language materials such as dictionaries.
• directed physical response; responding physically 'as with directives'.
• translation: 'using the first language as a basis for understanding and/or producing the L2'
• grouping: organizing learning on the basis of 'common attributes'.
• note-taking: writing down the gist etc of texts.
• deduction: conscious application of rules to processing the L2.
• recombination: putting together smaller meaningful elements into new wholes.
• imagery: visualizing information for memory storage - "Pretend you are doing something indicated in the sentences to make up about the new word".
• auditory representation: keeping a sound or sound sequence in the mind - "When you are trying to learn how to say something, speak it in your mind first".
• key word: using key word memory techniques, such as identifying an L2 word with an L1 word that it sounds like.
• conceptualization: 'placing a word or phrase in a meaningful language sequence'.
• elaboration: 'relating new information to other concepts in memory'.
• transfer: using previous knowledge to help language learning - "If they're talking about something I have already learnt (in Spanish), all I have to do is remember the information and try to put it into English"
• inferencing: guessing meanings by using available information - "I think of the whole meaning of the sentence, and then I can get the meaning of the new word".
• question for clarification: asking a teacher or native for explanation, help, etc.

C. Social Mediation strategies:

• cooperation: working with fellow-students on language

Brown, H. D. (2000). Principles of language teaching and learning (4th ed.). White Plains, NY: Longman
Hancock, Z. (2002) Heritage Spanish Speakers’ Language Learning Strategies. ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics.
Oxford, R. (1990). Language learning strategies: What every teacher should know. Boston: Heinle & Heinle.
Oxford, R. (2001). Language learning styles and strategies. In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language (3rd ed.). Boston: Heinle & Heinle.

O'Malley, J.M., Chamot, A.U., Stewner-Manzanares, G., Kupper, L. & Russo, R.P. (1985), 'Learning strategies used by beginning and intermediate ESL students', Language Learning, 35, 21-46

Foreign Language Teaching Strategy

Instructional process of vocabulary (Kataoka, 1998)

Step 1: Vocabulary Presentation
Topical presentation for efficient learning.
Methods• Visual • Gesture

Step 2: Input Activities
Methods • Filling in the blanks • Multiple choices • Definition •Logical Completion • Logical Sequence • Association • True or false • Self-tests • Matching

Step 3: Playing with Words
Word-level activities. In this step, the instructors try to make their learners understand the relationship between form & meaning, and relationship among related words in terms of imagining, grouping, categorizing, elaboration, chunking, clustering, and anchoring.
Methods • Semantic mapping • Making a tree • Grids • Association • Chaining • Flash card activities • Categorization • Brain storming

Step 4: Output Activities
Let learners use vocabulary in context
Methods • In addition to the above list, • Surveys • Interviews • Signature activities • Question & Answers

Step 5: Incorporating a New Grammatical Structure
In context related to vocabulary topic, present new grammar items.
Methods • Dialogues • Personalized • Conceptualized activities

Step 6: Expansion Activities
Paragraph and discourse level. Let learners use new vocabulary in broader contexts, real-life situations. Transfer from listening/speaking to reading/writing. Less or no teacher control
Methods • Reading • Composition • Role-plays • Situation Practices

Glossary:

• (Word) Association: Give students a key work and have them, in 30 seconds, record all the words that come to their minds. This activity gets at the connotative aspects of a topic to reveal one’s cultural and individual framework. This must be done in the native language which is the language that carries the student’s culture.
  Brain storming: Students generate lists of: categories of information they would expect to find; questions they would expect to have answered; objects or descriptive words evoked by the topic; characteristics or qualities evoked; advantages and disadvantages; etc. (Hadley, A. 2000)
• (Word) Chaining: Students are given a key word and asked to record the first word that comes to their minds, then pass the paper to another person, and another so that a cluster of 9-10 associations for one word is formed. OR: students are given a key word and asked to record the first word that comes to their minds, then pass the paper to another person who will use the word the student recorded as they key word for an association. For example: HOLIDAY - > family; FAMILY-> distance; DISTANCE -> travel; etc., OR, students provide a perceived opposite or contrast to the key word. (Hadley, A. 1993)
• Categorization: Students complete a grid, flow chart or “semantic map” by writing in words/phrases in the text that correspond to different categories: people, places, things, actions, feelings or moods; past events/ present events; words that relate to particular topics, and so on. (Hadley, A. 1993)
• Composition:
• Conceptualized activities:
• Definition: Students are asked to provide a definition or description of a term. (Hadley, A. 1993)
• Dialogues:
• Filling in the blanks:
• Flash card activities:
• Grids: Students organize experience and background information in some visual form.
• Interviews:
• Logical Completion/conclusion: Students read a short statement or series of statements and decide whether or not an additional sentence follows logically. If it does, students state that series is logical. If the second sentence is a non-sequitur, however, students must change it to make it follow from the first. (Hadley, A. 1993)
• Logical Sequence/questions: Students are encourage to think of logical questions that would elicit a particular response. (Hadley, A. 1993)
• Making a tree:
• Multiple choices:
• Personalized:
• Question & Answers:
• Reading:
• Role-plays: Students may be asked to role play a particular transaction or function in a defined context to reveal their own cultural “script” of behavior and verbal exchange. Or students may be asked to undergo some experience relevant to ultimately understanding a text. (Hadley, A. 1993)
• Scales:
• Self-tests:
• Semantic mapping: Students are given a topic or key word and asked to brainstorm (in the target language) words related to the topic in various categories. (Johnson and Pearson, 1978)
• Signature activities:
• Situation Practices:
• Surveys:
• TPR (Total Physical Response Approach):
• True or false:
  
  Hadley, A & Terry R. 2000. Teaching Languages in Context (Information on book - Click HERE )

Teaching Strategy by Imai (1995)'s わざー光る授業への道案内

この本は日本語の実践マニュアルだけあって、いろいろなアイディアが紹介されている。特に、「体の動き」を使った語彙、文法の導入・練習方法がわかりやく書かれている。

導入方法：実物を使う、絵（印象的なもの）、図表、写真、スライド（２〜４枚）、ビデオなどの媒介を使い分ける、良い例文、同意語、反意語を使う、CM、ジェスチャー（Total Physical Response）、シンクロニティ（ことばと概念の一体化）、演技、ゲーム、音楽（サジェストペディア）、五感・感情・理性の総動員、ベルボ・トナル法／Verbo-Tonal Method（ 体の動きを使っての発音習得方法）

１　ウォーミングアップ、地ならし：日本語で考える準備、雰囲気づくり、既習の語彙・文型

２　語彙、表現のコントロール：新出文型は既習語彙で・新出語彙は既習文型で、話に引き込む、学習者の反応に合わせる

３　「語彙・表現のコントロール」を支える「わざ」

• 語順をむやみに変えない
• 似たものは同時に与えない
• 適切な状況設定
• 学習者の心理プロセスに配慮する
• 難易度とスピードのバランス

４　何度も短時間に復習する：「１０の情報で７の習得」

５　代表的な復習の仕方

• 授業の初めに前回の復習
• 学習者の質問や間違いをきっかけに復習
• 新出語彙・文型を導入する際、関連語彙・文型を復習
• ゲームや雑談の中で何気なく復習
• 副教材（聴解テープ、VTR、読解）で復習
• 小テストで復習

Imai, K (1995) Waza - Hikarujyugyo heno michi annai (Skills - A guide to effective teaching). Tokyo: Aruku.