Teaching and Researching Language Learning Strategies

Self-Regulation in Context, Second Edition

Rebecca L. Oxford

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138856790
• eBook ISBN: 9781317515104
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Now in its second edition, Teaching and Researching Language Learning Strategies: Self-Regulation in Context charts the field systematically and coherently for the benefit of language learning practitioners, students, and researchers. This volume carries on the author's tradition of linking theoretical insights with readability and practical utility and offers an enhanced Strategic Self-Regulation Model. It is enriched by many new features, such as the first-ever major content analysis of published learning strategy definitions, leading to a long-awaited, encompassing strategy definition that, to a significant degree, brings order out of chaos in the strategy field. Rebecca L. Oxford provides an intensive discussion of self-regulation, agency, and related factors as the "soul of learning strategies." She ushers the strategy field into the twenty-first century with the first in-depth treatment of strategies and complexity theory.

A major section is devoted to applications of learning strategies in all language skill areas and in grammar and vocabulary. The last chapter presents innovations for strategy instruction, such as ways to deepen and differentiate strategy instruction to meet individual needs; a useful, scenario-based emotion regulation questionnaire; insights on new research methods; and results of two strategy instruction meta-analyses. This revised edition includes in-depth questions, tasks, and projects for readers in every chapter. This is the ideal textbook for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in TESOL, ELT, education, linguistics, and psychology.

Section A
Focusing

Greater Clarity for Definitions and Theories

Section A presents the basics necessary for understanding foreign and second language (L2) learning strategies. Chapter 1 reports on a major content-analytic study of definitions of learning strategies and related terms, including those from the L2 field and from outside. The chapter also presents a new definition of language learning strategies and discusses factors in reaching (or failing to reach) consensus on strategy definitions. Because strategies are intimately involved with self-regulation, agency, autonomy, and associated concepts, Chapter 2 explores these relationships with a scope and a lucidity that have not been seen before in the L2 learning strategy field. Chapter 3 emphasizes that strategies cannot be understood outside of real contexts and that strategies reflect complexity. These three chapters form part of the theoretical base for the Strategic Self-Regulation (S²R) Model. The rest of the theoretical base is offered in Section B and elsewhere in the book. The postscript (pp. 339–340) contains a clear, succinct summary of the theory.

1 Bringing Order out of Chaos

Definitions and Features of Language Learning Strategies

Blessed rage … to order words of the sea, …

And of ourselves and of our origins

Wallace Stevens

The quotation above speaks of a blessed rage to order the words of our very selves and our origins. I often think of this quotation when considering the vast number of definitions of second and foreign language (L2) learning strategies (also known by some as L2 learner strategies). Just as the poem describes a rage to bring order to the world and humankind, I long to bring order out of chaos regarding learning strategy definitions and learning strategies as a whole. I will do this through the Strategic Self-Regulation (S²R) Model, which originated in the first edition of this book (Oxford, 2011). The model insists on and provides a clear, encompassing strategy definition (Chapter 1). This definition mentions self-regulation, which is one of the key learner “strength factors” (Chapter 2). The definition also relates to context and complexity (Chapter 3). The S²R Model includes a set of interlocking but flexible strategy categories (Chapters 4 through 6). It includes strategies for language subsystems (e.g., grammar and vocabulary, Chapter 7) and language skill areas (reading, writing, listening, speaking, and related aspects, Chapters 8 and 9). Principles in the model can serve as a foundation for innovations in strategy instruction, strategy assessment, and strategy research (Chapter 10).

This chapter offers a much-needed definition based on an in-depth analysis of 33 existing strategy definitions. Before that discussion, however, I will introduce three learners who employ strategies to help them learn and use the new language. Why pay attention to the stories of these learners? Why notice the details of the situations, the people, and the strategies? Why not cut to the chase and jump right into abstract principles, theoretical disquisitions, and research summaries? The following comments by Grenfell and Harris (1999) offer a useful answer:

The key sense we wish to convey … is not of a language learner learning a language in some decontextualized, idealized realm disconnected from the problems and processes of everyday life, but quite the opposite: of someone plunged into the maelstrom of the world with its demands and mixed messages. (p. 41)

In reading about the following three learners, consider potential evidence of their strategies.

Scenario 1: Laura, a British Engineer Learning German

Laura, a civil engineer in the city of Reading in the U.K., likes languages and family history. In the nineteenth century, her family came to England from Hamburg, Germany, so she has a personal interest in German language and culture. Unless she learns German, she feels the old family history will slip away, as it has for her parents. She studies German each night, except when she goes out with her boyfriend or has a family event. She enjoys contrasting German with her mother tongue, English. She keeps online files for analyzing German words, phrases, and sentences, and she digitally catalogues examples of the language in action. She has several German language textbooks at various difficulty levels and consults them as she tries to read German magazines and short stories. She sometimes watches YouTube clips in German and sees films in German with English subtitles but avoids depending on the subtitles. When driving long distances, she listens to audiobooks in German. Laura hears about an “online language exchange” program that would allow her to talk to a German language partner via synchronous video at any time the partners choose. The conversation would be half in English and half in German and would cover any topics the partners decide on. She would help her German partner with conversational English, and the partner would help her with German. She hopes to develop much better German grammatical competence, expand her vocabulary, learn to build those long German words, have communication practice, gain a better understanding of current German culture, and make a friend – all at the same time.¹ Laura especially hopes her learning partner will correct her German pronunciation, because she wants to pronounce German well when she eventually visits Germany to track her family roots. She eagerly signs up for the program.

Scenario 2: Martin, an Austrian Soldier Helping Refugees

Martin is an Austrian soldier from Vienna who is called upon to work with overstressed, exhausted, and underfed Arabic-speaking refugees at the border of his country. Quite often there is no translator available, and hand gestures and facial expressions are inadequate for communication. Though very few of his military mates take great pains to communicate in Arabic, Martin studies an Arabic language phrase book at night. The book helps somewhat but does not include phrases needed for medical emergencies and official situations. On duty he carries a smartphone in order to figure out Arabic words and phrases based on the pronunciation he hears or thinks he hears. He listens carefully when a refugee is speaking and tries to relate what he hears to his knowledge of the situation and his fledgling knowledge of Arabic. When he is home on leave, he goes to a bookstore to find a serious German–Arabic language dictionary and, if possible, locate some relevant picture magazines in Arabic. The alphabet is terribly hard for him, but he is very smart, and he figures that even minimal alphabetical skills might someday, with effort and help, morph into reading skills. Some ability is better than none, he tells himself. For specific language learning tips, he seeks out his friend Kaethe, who is a faculty member at the Universität Wien (University of Vienna) and who wrote a manuscript on “learning how to learn languages.” He also spends an hour with a surprised imam at a Viennese mosque, asking questions about how to interact with and help the refugees.

Scenario 3: Luisa, a Mexican Immigrant Learning English in the U.S.

Luisa is a teenage Mexican immigrant in a southeastern state in the U.S. She has lived there for only six months but hopes to stay. Her parents work at the local chicken processing plant and feel lucky to have jobs, especially with the difficult legal situation of undocumented workers.² Her family speaks only Spanish at home. There are only a few Mexicans in her new school, so she feels quite shy, although she was popular and extroverted in her former city of Guadalajara, Mexico. She is in an algebra class composed primarily of students who have spoken English all their lives. Algebra is her favorite subject; she first encountered it in Mexico. At last a girl named Mary in the algebra class reaches out to Luisa, introduces her to several other girls, and invites her to church, which is often done in their small American town. Luisa is happy to have a friend. She loves to hear Mary’s stories about school, boys, cheerleading, and twitter, and Mary helps her with English speaking and writing. Luisa, an instinctively good organizer and fine algebra student, helps Mary organize her school notebooks and, as time goes on, helps her friend better understand algebra.³ In her backpack Luisa carries a small notebook to school, and she writes in it new words and phrases (sometimes in invented spelling). At home she transfers the information nightly to a second-hand laptop that she shares with her younger brother, Marco, and she uses the spellchecker. Sometimes she types in full sentences using the notes taken earlier in the day. She discovers the joys of YouTube songs in English and tries to get the family to stop watching Telemundo long enough for her to watch some English language programs. She dreams of having a smartphone someday to help her improve her English.

All these learners were engaged in learning languages and were using strategies to help them do it. What strategies did you find in their stories?

The term L2 learning strategies has dozens of shades of meaning and has sparked theoretical battles over several continents and on the pages of many journals. In this chapter I hope to alleviate some of this definitional conflict by carefully analyzing existing definitions and offering the best, most defensible, most convincing definition possible from my perspective. In this process, I will do my best to exhibit intellectual honesty, analytic skill, good judgment, and diplomacy.

How This Chapter Is Organized

In the rest of the chapter, the first part describes the present status of L2 learning strategy definitions (the “unpruned garden syndrome”). The second and third parts offer a systematic, content-analytic study of 33 definitions of learning strategies and related terms, such as learner strategies, self-regulated learning strategies, and “strategic.” This is the first content-analytic, definitional study of its kind concerning L2 learning strategies, although academic pundits have publicly and repeatedly wrung their hands over the overabundance of strategy definitions. The subsequent part presents my own current definition of L2 learning strategies, which includes core/prototypical features and which serves as a foundation for the S²R Model. The final part calls for action toward a joint, field-wide understanding of L2 learning strategies and an agreement on a definition of these strategies. Although entrenched beliefs have prevented such a collaborative solution in the past, I hope this chapter and this book will change the situation. The chapter ends with further readings and questions, tasks, and projects for readers.

The Unpruned Garden Syndrome

Like others, I have found a notable?lack of consensus on strategy definitions to date. The concept of L2 learning strategies stimulated the rampant growth of definitions, as if reflecting the Chinese slogan, “Let a hundred flowers bloom, and a hundred schools of thought contend” (Encyclopedia Brita...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Series Editors‘ Preface
• Preface
• Introduction
• SECTION A Focusing: Greater Clarity for Definitions and Theories
• SECTION B Flexibility and Function: Understanding L2 Learning Strategies According to Their Roles in Context
• SECTION C Live Applications: Strategies in the Skill Areas and the Language Subsystems
• SECTION D Innovations: Strategy Instruction, Assessment, and Research
• Postscript: Brief Summary of the Strategic Self-Regulation (S2R) Theory
• Appendix A: Definitions of and Comments about Second Language, Foreign Language, and Other Associated Terms
• Appendix B: Sources of Quotations in Epigraphs
• About the author
• Index