English Language Teaching in its Social Context

176 JACI< C. RICHARDSsuccessful readers, confirming Wenden’s observation that “ineffcctive learners are inactivelearners. Their apparent inability to learn is, in fact, due to their not having an appropriaterepertoire of learning strategies’’ (1 985: 7).Studies of how learners approach writing tasks have also focused on the effectivencssof the processes learners employ (Raimes 1985). Lapp (1 984) summarizes some of theresearch findings on differcnces between skilled and unskilled writers with respect torehearsing and prewriting behaviors (what a writer does before beginning writing), draftingand writing processes (how the writer actually composes a piece of writing), and revisingbchaviors (revisions and corrections the writer makcs).Rescarch findings on learner strategies in reading and writing classes (e.g., Heuring1984) suggest that teachers need to evaluate their teaching strategies on an ongoing basis,to determine if they are promoting effective or incffectivc learning strategies in learners.Many commonly employed tcchniqucs in the teaching of writing, such as outlining orwriting from a rhetorical model, might well inhibit rather than encourage the developmentof effective writing skills, because they direct the learner’s attention to the form andmechanics of writing too early in the writing process.In order to present information about learning strategies to students, strategies ncedto bc operationalized in the form of specific techniques (see Fraser and Skibicki 1987);however, there is no consensus yet concerning how to approach the teaching of learningstrategies. As with othcr aspects of language teaching, the issue of whcther strategies arebest “learned” or “acquired” is a central one. Some researchers advocate a direct approach.This involves explicit training in the use of specific strategies and teaching students toconsciously monitor their own strategies (e.g., O’Malley et al. 1985a, b; Russo and Stewner-Manzanares 1985). Others favor a more indirect approach in which strategies areincorporated into other kinds of learning content. Fraser and Skibicki (1 987) describe thedevelopment of self-directed learning materials for adult migrant learners in Australia,which focus on specific strategies in cliffcrent skill areas. A related issue concerns whetherthe focus of teacher intervention should be to provide additional strategies to learners ormerely to help the learner develop a bettcr awarencss of and control over existing strategies.Willing (1987: 277) observes that despite thc recent amount of attention to learningstrategies, some serious issucs still await resolution:1234Current notions of learning strategies lack conceptual coherence . . .Learning strategies as currently described have bccn identified more or less in isolationand on a purely empirical and arbitrary basis and have not been rclated to an overallview of learning . . .Thcre has been little systematic work on placing learning strategies within a broaderdescription of the nature and meaning of learning itself. . .Thcre has been little effort to relate the notion of lcarning strategies (within a generallearning theory) to current ideas about second language acquisition.In addition, there has been little attempt to relate theorics of learning stratcgies to moregeneral theories of teaching, such as the one discussed previously.SummaryTwo approaches to language teaching havc been discusscd and contrasted. One conceptualizesteaching as application of a teaching method, in which both thc teacher and thc