LANGUAGE

LEARNING
STYLES AND
STRATEGIES
BIP 3187 ELT
METHODOLOGY
 OVERVIEW

• Cognitive variations in L2 learning: variations in

learning styles that differ across individuals
• Strategies employed by individuals to solve particular
problems in particular contexts.

Can you recall the language

learning styles & strategies that
you have used in acquiring English
language?
 DEFINITIONS OF STYLE

Refers to consistent and rather

enduring tendencies or preferences
within individual.
General characteristics of
intellectual functioning that
differentiate individuals.

E.g: More visually oriented, more

tolerant ambiguity.
 DEFINITIONS OF STRATEGIES

Refers to specific methods of approaching a

problem or task, modes of operation for
achieving goals.

Plans design to control & manipulate

certain information.

Contextualized ‘battle plans’ that

might vary from time to time. Keeps
on changing.
 Language Styles Language Learning
Strategies
The general approach Specific actions taken by
preferred by the student the learner to make
when learning a subject, learning easier, faster,
acquiring a language, or more enjoyable, more
dealing with a difficult self-directed, more
problem (Oxford 2001; effective and more
Reid 1998). transferable to new
situations (Oxford, 1990).
 Task 1
What are the strategies
that you use/have used to
learn English?
• List 3 strategies.
• Be prepared to share
your answers in class.
Suppose you are visiting a foreign country whose
language you don’t speak/read. You have landed at the
airport & your contact person, whose name you don’t
know is not there yet. To top it off, your luggage is
missing. It is 3.00 am and no one in the sparsely staffed
airport speaks English. What should you do?

No single solution to this multifaceted

problem. It depends on your styles.
 Possible solutions depending
on styles
Tolerant of ambiguity will not easily get flustered
by your unfortunate circumstances.
Reflective will exercise patience & not quickly
jump to conclusion on how to solve it.
Field independent will focus on necessary &
relevant details & not be distracted by surrounding.
 LEARNING STYLES

The way we learn things & way we

Cognitive style address a problem is a link between
personality & cognition.

Cognitive styles are specifically related

Learning style to an educational context, where
affective & logical factors are unite.
 LEARNING STYLES

Might be thought as “cognitive”, “affective” &

“physiological” traits that are stable indicators of
how learners perceive, interact with & respond
to learning environment (Keefe, 1979).

 Learning styles mediate between emotion &

cognition.
 People’s styles are determined by the way
they internalize their environment. Affective
& cognitive domains also merge.
 There is a long list of learning styles.
 Selected few styles which have emerged in second
language research as potentially significant
contributors to successful acquisition are as follow:
- Field Independence
- Ambiguity Tolerance
- Reflectivity & Impulsivity
 Field Dependence Field Independence

A person’s view & A person’s view &

thinking about a thinking about a
task or problem are task or problem are
strongly influenced strongly influenced
by contextual more by the
factors as additional person’s knowledge
information and base than by the
other people’s presence of
behaviour. additional
information or
other people’s
behaviour.
The Differences
The Differences
 Field Independence

• E.g; Reading a book in a noisy train station, doing

assignment/ studying at McDonald or Starbuck.
• Increases child maturity to adulthood.
• Suitable classroom learning: analysis, attention to
details, mastering of exercises, drills & other focused
activities.
 Field Dependence
• Tend to be more socialized, to derive their self –
identity from persons around them.
• Usually more emphatic & perceive of the feelings and
thoughts of others.
• Will be successful in learning the communicative
aspects of L2 due to their empathy, social outreach &
perception of other people.
 Ambiguity Tolerance

Refers to the degree to

which you are cognitively
willing to tolerate ideas &
propositions that run
counter to your own
belief system/ structure
of knowledge.
 Ambiguity Tolerance
Advantages
 Free to entertain a number of innovative and creative
possibilities.
 Not cognitively/ affectively disturbed by ambiguity &
uncertainty.
 Learners with high tolerance for ambiguity were
slightly more successful in certain language tasks.
 Ambiguity Tolerance in SLA

 Words that differ from the native language, different rules

which are also inconsistent because of certain “exceptions”.
 Sometimes a whole cultural system that is distant from of
the native culture.
 Ambiguity Tolerance in SLA
• Too much tolerance can cause harmful effect.
-Could become “wishy – washy”.

• Accepting virtually every proposition before them, not

efficiently sub-summing necessary facts into their
cognitive organizational structure.
 Definition
Reflectivity Impulsivity
 Refers to systematic thinkers  Refers to a person who
who tend to weigh all the makes a number of different
considerations in a problem, gambles on the basis of
work out all the loopholes ‘hunches’, with possibly
and then after extensive several successive gambles
reflection, venture a before a solution is
solution. achieved.
 Difference
Reflectivity Impulsivity
 In a problem-solving  In a problem-solving
situation, students prefer to situation, students responds
spend more time collecting quickly with little collection
information & analysing its or analysis of information.
relevance to the solution
before offering a response.
 Reflectivity

Learners who are reflective tend to make

fewer errors in reading than impulsive
children.

Inductive reasoning was found to be more

effective with reflective persons

Slower but more accurate in reading compared

to impulsive students.

Reflection was weakly related to performance

on a proof- reading task (Abraham, 1981).
 Reflectivity

Reflective persons may require patience from

teachers.

Teachers must allow more time for reflective

students to struggle with responses.

Reflective persons tend to remain longer at a

particular stage with ‘larger’ leap from stage to
stage.
 Impulsivity

Faster readers, eventually master the

‘psycholinguistic guessing game’ of reading but
not necessarily deter comprehension.

Teachers tend to judge mistakes too harshly

because impulsive person tend to gamble at an
answer.

May go through a number of rapid transitions

of semi grammatical stages of SLA.
Align your teaching style to the
various learning styles of your
students.
 Language Learning
Strategies

“Specific actions taken by learners to make

learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more
self – directed and more transferable to new
situations” (Oxford, 1990).
 Language Learning
Strategies
Not permanent but moment by moment techniques
that we employ to solve problems posed by L2 input
& output.
Learning strategies
SLA Communication strategies
Language Learning Strategies
 General Type of Language
Learning Strategies
Memory Help students to store and retrieve information.
strategies
Cognitive Enable learners to understand and produce new
strategies language.

Compensation Allow learners to communicate despite deficiencies in

strategies their language knowledge.

Richards & Lockhart (2011)

 General Type of Language
Learning Strategies
Metacognitive Allow learners to control their own learning through
strategies organizing, planning and evaluating.
Affective Help learners gain control over their emotions, attitudes,
strategies motivations and values.

Social Help learners interact with other people.

strategies

Richards & Lockhart (2011)

 Communication strategies
It pertains to the employment of verbal & non –
verbal mechanisms for the productive communication
of information.

 It can be defined as potentially conscious plans for

solving what to an individual presents itself as a
problem in reaching a particular communicative goal.
Communication strategies
Communication strategies
 Avoidance strategies

 Avoidance within a semantic category.

Syntactic or
lexical For example,
avoidance Learner: I lost my road.
Native Speaker: You lost your road?
Learner: Uh…I lost. I lost. I got lost.
 Avoidance strategies

 Avoid using certain words because of its

Phonological
avoidance phonological difficulty.

 Avoid the whole topic of conversation.

Topic avoidance
 Might be avoided entirely.
 E.g: change the subject, pretend not to understand,
not responding when a message is too difficult to
express.
 Compensatory strategies

 Involves compensation for missing knowledge.

 The memorized chunks of language known as

prefabricated patterns – memorization of certain stock
phrases/ sentences without internalized knowledge of
the components.
 E.g: “How do you do?” Pocket bilingual
phrase books.
“How much does this cause?”
 Compensatory strategies
 Code switching: the use of a first/ third language
within a stream of speech in L2.
 Occurs between 2 advanced learners with a
common L1.

 Code – switch: use their native language to fill in

missing knowledge
 Strategies – based instructions
Application of both learning & communication strategies to
classroom learning known as strategies – based instructions
(SBI).

Teachers can benefit from understanding of what makes

learners successful & unsuccessful in classroom language
learning.
 Strategies – based instructions

SBI benefits students if they:

1)understand the strategy itself
2)perceive it to be effective
3) do not consider its implementation to be
overly difficult.
 Strategies – based instructions

Several different models of SBI are now being practiced in

language classes around the world:
1)Teachers help students to be aware of their own style
preferences and strategies

2)Teachers can embed strategy awareness & practice into

their pedagogy.
 Strategies – based instructions

3) Certain compensatory technique are sometimes practiced

to help students overcome certain weaknesses.

4) Textbooks include strategy instruction as part of a content –

centered approach.
Strategies – based instructions
Strategies – based instructions
 Conclusion
A learning strategy cannot be categorized as either good or
bad.

A strategy is useful when:

1) the strategy relates well to the L2 task at hand.
2) the student employs the strategy effectively & links it
with other relevant strategies for doing the task.
3) the strategy coordinates with the student’s general
learning style preferences to one degree or another.
 Reflection
How does the knowledge about language learning
styles & strategies help you in your future
classroom practice?
 ENTRY 1

• Read the General Procedures for

Teaching Learning Strategies
• Prepare a diagram that illustrates
the procedures.
 ENTRY 2
In small groups (3 students),
• Choose one learning strategy
that is the most effective for you.
• Based on the general procedures,
create an activity to teach the
strategy.
English Language Teaching Methodology

Dr Nurul Farehah Mohamad Uri

English Language & Literature Department
Faculty of Languages and Communication, UPSI
[email protected]
05- 600 6808