Learning Strategy Instruction in the Language Classroom

Issues and Implementation

Anna Uhl Chamot, Vee Harris, Anna Uhl Chamot, Vee Harris

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781788923422
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Teaching Language Arts
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This comprehensive collection, comprising both theoretical and practical contributions, is unique in its focus on language learning strategy instruction (LLSI). The chapters, written by leading international experts, embrace both sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic perspectives. The issues presented include different models of strategy instruction and how they can be tailored according to context and the learners' age and attainment level. The collection will be an important resource for researchers in the field, both for its critical perspectives and its guidance on collaborating with teachers to design interventions to implement strategy instruction. It also identifies key areas for research, including the teaching of less studied groups of strategies such as grammar and affective strategies. The book will prove equally valuable to language teachers through the provision of detailed teaching materials and tasks. Those engaged in professional development, whether pre- or in-service teacher education, will find a wealth of concrete ideas for sessions, courses and assignments.

Part 1

Issues: Models and Contexts

Introduction to Part 1

In a learner-centred language classroom, teachers soon realize that their students are very different. Language learners differ from each other in multiple dimensions, ranging from obvious differences in motivation and ability to more subtle ones such as attribution and degree of self-efficacy. Other differences can be linked to individual learning approaches, social and cultural factors, psycholinguistic issues, and even mismatches between the teacher’s instructional methods and the students’ learning needs.

(Anna Uhl Chamot, Chapter 12 in this volume)

Parts 1 and 2 of this book are concerned with the theoretical issues underlying language learning strategy instruction (LLSI). Our understanding of how, when and why learners use strategies has developed considerably over the last 40 years but we have made less headway in relation to LLSI. We have tended to content ourselves with the global question of whether LLSI interventions ‘work’ or not, rather than exploring in depth why that particular model of LLSI was chosen, what it looked like or how and why its impact varied according to the learners’ background, motivation, level and so on.

The chapters in Part 1 set out to tackle these questions, with the opening chapter exploring in what contexts and with which groups of strategies LLSI seems to be more successful. Chapters 2 and 4 concentrate on the advantages and limitations of various frameworks of LLSI and their relationship to learner autonomy. Both highlight the value of an approach in which the tasks and the strategies to handle them are discussed and negotiated between students and teacher. The focus of Chapters 3 and 5 moves from the organisation of the classroom to the learners themselves. Chapter 3 studies the sociocultural factors that influence how different groups of learners develop particular groups of strategies and how the LLSI can be tailored to make the most of their specific strengths. Chapter 5 highlights how learners’ sense of self-efficacy can impact on their progress and how teacher feedback on their choice of strategies for a task can almost act as an intervention in itself since it helps them learn more effectively and more autonomously. Part 1 concludes by shifting the attention again – this time from the learner to what they are learning. A key debate in the most recent literature has been the transferability of strategies, particularly between the first and second language. Chapter 6, however, considers transferability from the language to curriculum areas such as geography, science or history.

1Language Learning Strategy Instruction: Recent Research and Future Directions1

Luke Plonsky

A vast body of empirical research has been concerned with language learning strategy instruction (LLSI). To my knowledge, in fact, over 400 studies, reviews, book chapters, monographs and dissertations have addressed this topic (see previous reviews and discussions in Cohen & Macaro, 2007; Harris et al., 2001). Yet very few studies have explicitly investigated the relative effects of different methods of LLSI (Walters, 2006). Unfortunately, the lack of theory in this area has left researchers and practitioners to design studies of LLSI based largely on convenience, intuition and/or some level of idiosyncrasy. This chapter explores some of the issues to be considered.

One major source of the interest in LLSI is very likely the intuitive appeal underlying work in this area: the idea that teachers can help students become more effective learners and users of the target language. Beyond its intuitive appeal, there are also a number of complementary – and very compelling – reasons, both theoretical and practical in nature, why such a long-standing, diverse and prolific line of studies has sought to test the effects of LLSI. In the realm of theory, for example, interest in LLSI was bolstered by the move towards learner centeredness in the language classroom and elsewhere in educational research (e.g. Nunan, 1988; Nyikos, 1996; Tudor, 1996; Wenden, 2002). This move also drew a theoretical link to autonomy and self-regulation (Nguyen & Gu, 2013; Tseng et al., 2006; Wenden, 1998) because, as A.D. Cohen (1998: 70) stated, the primary driving force behind LLSI is the aim to ‘empower students by allowing them to take control of the language learning process’. Beyond connecting to education and psychology through a common concern with learners on an individual level, strategies received increased attention in second language acquisition (SLA) as models of communicative competence began to include a component of strategic competence (Bachman & Palmer, 1996).

For many if not most researchers, however, the greatest strength of LLSI lies not in theory but in its potential for practical application. This was certainly what led me to this topic in the early 2000s. As a novice teacher and researcher, I was interested in exploring pedagogical techniques that might help my students become better learners, thereby making my efforts as well as theirs more efficient. The next step was obvious: to delve into the primary literature. I quickly came to understand that most studies of LLSI share a number of design features which are typical of (quantitative) research methods in the field of instructed SLA (see Hassan et al., 2005; Plonsky, 2017). For those who might not be familiar with designs in this domain, researchers generally work with two or more intact classes, at least one of which receives explicit instruction on how to use a set of strategies. Another group of students usually receives the same amount of instruction and teacher contact but without any explicit attention to strategies. The effectiveness of the intervention is then determined in terms of absolute gains made over time (that is, by comparing students’ pretest and posttest performance on language tasks or tests) as well relative to the control or comparison group. The effectiveness of LLSI is therefore defined as change (improvement) in learners’ ability to use the target language as a result of the intervention. The instruments used to measure that improvement are also designed in accordance with the skills being targeted. A study of speaking strategy instruction (SI), for instance, might test learners’ oral fluency, whereas a test of vocabulary learning strategies will assess learners’ ability to learn or use a given set of lexical items.

My initial forays into LLSI research were quite encouraging. I found that studies in this area were numerous; more often than not, they also provided empirical justification for classroom implementations. In order to gain a comprehensive view of the literature in this area and its effects, I conducted a meta-analysis (Plonsky, 2011), building on the insights of previous reviews (e.g. Chamot, 2005; Hassan et al., 2005). The results of that study found stable evidence in favor of LLSI. Based on a sample of 61 primary studies, the mean effect size was d = 0.49, 95% CIs [0.44, 0.53]. This result can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Although not especially large compared to the effects found elsewhere in second language (L2) research (see Plonsky & Oswald, 2014), statistically speaking, the posttest scores of experimental groups described in the previous paragraph were found to score, on average, half of a standard deviation above their counterparts in the comparison groups. To put it another way, this finding indicates that about two-thirds of the learners who receive LLSI score higher than the average of the learners that receive no such treatment. This finding also showed that the effects of strategy instruction for language learners were comparable to what had been observed in strategy instruction implemented in other non-L2 educational contexts (Hattie et al., 1996).

Despite the largely positive effects of LLSI research, the results of my study provided evidence of substantial variability across studies. As we might expect, the effectiveness of LLSI appeared to vary across different contexts (second or foreign language (FL)), learner demographics (age, attainment level, and so on), and outcomes (for example, the target skills of reading, writing, vocabulary, and so forth). At the same time, however, my 2011 study revealed widespread idiosyncrasy across studies in terms of different approaches to selecting strategies and implementing programs of LLSI. Further complicating – and limiting – our understanding of LLSI is a lack of detail provided in terms of the instructional procedures.

The following three sections briefly outline the rationale for considering a number of variables as potential moderators of the effects of LLSI, including the design of the LLSI intervention (for example, the length of time). Following the narrative review of the literature, I provide an update on my 2011 meta-analysis. Specifically, the current version of the study provides a systematic synthesis of the effects of LLSI based on 77 individual studies with a total number of 7890 learners. I then discuss the results with an eye to practical implications and empirically grounded directions for extending and improving this body of research.

Contexts and Learner Dem...