An article review of
"Learning Strategies"
Daniel J, Boudah,. & Kevin J, O'Neill
Section 1: Introduction
Summary
The article starts with an introduction to the learning strategies and the need for these strategies. As students shift from the skills emphasis of elementary grades to the content emphasis of secondary grades, and they improve, their needs to understanding more academic content and reading information from textbooks and working independently increase. Therefore the need for learning strategies increases. This is the reason for teaching these strategies in this article. A learning strategy is an individual's way of organizing and using a particular set of skills in order to learn content. Therefore, teachers who teach learning strategies should teach students how to learn, rather than teaching them specific curriculum content or specific skills. This article generally tries to answer three questions: 1.What does the research say about learning strategies? 2. How do teachers teach learning strategies? 3. What resources are available for teachers?
What does the research say about learning strategies? The several researches that have been done suggest the significance of these strategies and maintain that the appropriate use of learning strategies can improve student performance. For example, in reading, the use of the Word Identification Strategy indicated that the number of oral reading errors decreased while reading comprehension scores increased for all students on ability level and grade level materials (Lenz & Hughes, 1990). Other researchers in the area of learning strategies have also found positive results.
Rubin(1975) suggested that good language learners(a) willingly and accurately guess,(b) want to communicate (c) are inhibited about mistakes,(d) focus on both structure and meaning,(e) take advantage of all practice opportunities, and (f) monitor their own speech and that of others.(Richards and Renandya, 2002: 125)
How do teachers teach learning strategies? Students learn to use strategies in several steps. Firstly, the teacher assesses the current level of student performance on a strategy pretest. Then he describes the characteristics of the strategy and when, where, why, and how the strategy is used. Next, the teacher models how to use the strategy by "thinking aloud" as the strategy is applied to content material. Then the teacher gives a verbal practice of the strategy. Afterwards, controlled practice activities enable students to become proficient strategy users. Then the students are provided with appropriate feedback. And then students use the strategy with grade-appropriate or increasingly more difficult materials. Finally, after a posttest, teachers facilitate student generalization of strategy use in other academic and nonacademic settings. If students need to learn prerequisite skills, such as finding main ideas and details, teachers teach those before teaching the strategy, and reinforce student mastery of those skills during strategy instruction.
There is model called the STRATEGIC TEACHING MODEL , which means that if we want our students to learn about different sources of strategies, we should have a model for teaching and this model should have 5 steps: 1. Assess strategy use with: think aloud, interviews, questionnaire 2. Explain strategy by: naming it, telling how to use it, step by step 3. Model strategy by: demonstrating it, verbalizing own thought processes while doing task 4. Scaffold instruction by: providing support while students practice, adjusting support to student need, phrasing out support to encourage autonomous strategy use 5. Develop motivation by: providing successful experiences, relating strategy use to improve performance. (Williams and Burden, 1997:158)
What resources are available for teachers? The findings showed that learning strategies are organized in three strands: The information acquisition strand features the Word Identification Strategy, the Paraphrasing Strategy, and others. For example, Students use the Paraphrasing Strategy to improve reading comprehension of main ideas and details through paraphrasing. The information storage strand includes the FIRST-letter Mnemonic Strategy, the Paired Associates Strategy, as well as others. For instance, the Paired Associates Strategy enables students to pair pieces of new information with existing knowledge by using a visual device, and finally, the expression and demonstration of understanding strand includes the Sentence Writing Strategy, the Test Taking Strategy, and others. For example, the Sentence Writing Strategy is designed to teach students how to write simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences.
Section 2: Critique
This article is to introduce the learning strategies in a brief. But we believe, even introducing this subject needs to be comprehensive enough. Considering the topic, it can be generally stated that this article, although relevant and accurate, is not thorough enough, even to introduce it. There are three questions which this article seeks to answer. 1. What does the research say about learning strategies? 2. How do teachers teach learning strategies? 3. What resources are available for teachers? But the answers are incomplete and so to say one dimensional. For there are many researches done concerning the comprehensive subject of learning strategies, the answer to the first question seems to be not satisfying. In case of the second question, certainly many models have been suggested regarding the training the strategies. And finally, the answer to the third question is not satisfying because every teacher can make use of his/her unique way of teaching strategies while taking into account the needs, the potentialities and the time of the specific learners and situation; hence only following these resources would not be wise. However, this weakness of the article can be removed by having a comprehensive look at the questions posed.
References
1. Richards, Jack C and Renandya, Willy A. (2002). Methodology in language teaching, Cambridge university press.
2. Williams, Marion and Burden, Robert L. (1997). Psychology for language teachers, Cambridge university press
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