English Language Teaching in its Social Context

BEYOND METHODS 1754 What should I emphasize?5 How should I change?6 How am I doing?Learners decide to give priority to speciallinguistic items.Learners decide to change their approach tolanguage learning.Learners determine how well they use thelanguage and diagnose their needs.7 What am I getting out of this? Learners determine if an activity or strategyis useful.8 How am I responsible for learning?How is language learning affectingme?Learners make judgments about how tolearn a language and about what languagelearning is like.O’Malley et al. have investigated the use of strategies by ESL learners both in and out ofclassrooms (O’Malley et al. 1985a, b; O’Malley and Chamot 1989). ESL students and theirteachers were interviewed about the strategies learners used on specific language learningtasks, and the learners were observed in ESL classrooms.They were also asked about theiruse of English in communicative situations outside the classroom. A total of twenty-sixdifferent kinds of learning strategies were identified.In a follow-up study, high school ESL students were given training in the use ofparticular strategies in order to determine if it would improve their effectiveness as languagelearners and their performance on vocabulary, listening, and speaking tasks. Strategies werecompared across proficiency levels and with learners of different language backgrounds.Students were given training in the use of specific strategies for particular language learningtasks. Results supported the notion that learners can be taught to use more effective learningstrategies (O’Malley et al. 1985a, b):Strategies training was successfully demonstrated in a natural teaching environmentwith second language listening and speaking tasks. This indicates that classroomsinstruction on learning strategies with integrative language skills can facilitate learning.(O’Malley et a]. 1985a: 577)Phillips ( 1975) investigated how learners approach reading tasks and identified strategiesemployed by good and poor readers. She employed a “think-aloud” procedure to investigatereaders’ strategies in dealing with unknown vocabulary. From her students’ descriptionsPhillips found that strategies used by efficient readers included categorizing wordsgrammatically, interpreting grammatical operations, and recognizing cognates and rootwords. Hosenfeld (1 977, 1984) used similar techniques in studying processes employed byforeign language readers when encountering unfamiliar words. In one study (Hosenfeld1977), some of the differences between those with high and low scores on a readingproficiency test were these: High scorers tended to keep the meaning of the passage in mind,read in broad phrases, skip unessential words, and guess meanings of unknown wordsfrom context; low scorers tended to lose the meaning of sentences as soon as they decodedthem, read word by word or in short phrases, rarely skip words, and turn to the glossarywhen they encountered new words. In addition successful readers tended to identify thcgrammatical categories of words, could detect word-order differences in the foreignlanguage, recognized cognates, and used the glossary only as a last resort (Hosenfcld 1984:233). Hosenfeld found that unsuccessful readers could be taught the lexical strategies of