Strategies

We now turn to the second of our principal categories in this chapter, the level at which activity varies considerably within individuals as well as across individuals. Styles are general characteristics that differentiate one individual from another; strategies are those specific "attacks" that we make on a given problem. They are the moment-by-moment techniques that we employ to solve "problems" posed by second language input and output. The field of second language acquisition has distinguished between two types of strategy: learning strategies and communication strategies. The former relate to input—to processing, storage, and retrieval, that is, to taking in messages from others. The latter pertain to output, how we pro­ductively express meaning, how we deliver messages to others. We will examine both types of strategy here.

First, a brief historical note on the study of second language learners' strategies. As our knowledge of second language acquisition increased markedly during the 1970s, teachers and researchers came to realize that no single research finding and no single method of language teaching would usher in an era of universal success in teaching a second language. We saw that certain learners seemed to be successful regardless of methods or techniques of teaching. We began to see the importance of individual variation in language learning. Certain people appeared to be endowed with abilities to succeed; others lacked those abilities. This observation led Rubin (1975) and Stern (1975) to describe "good" language learners in terms of personal characteristics, styles, and strategies. Rubin (Rubin & Thompson 1982) later summarized fourteen such characteristics. Good language learners

1) find their own way, taking charge of their learning;

2) organize information about language;

3) are creative, developing a "feel" for the language by experi­menting with its grammar and words;

4) make their own opportunities for practice in using the language inside and outside the classroom;

5) learn to live with uncertainty by not getting flustered and by continuing to talk or listen without understanding every word;

6) use mnemonics and other memory strategies to recall what has been learned;

7) make errors work for them and not against them;

8) use linguistic knowledge, including knowledge of their first lan­guage, in learning a second language;

9) use contextual cues to help them in comprehension;

10) learn to make intelligent guesses;

11) learn chunks of language as wholes and formalized routines to help them perform "beyond their competence";

12) learn certain tricks that help to keep conversations going;

13) learn certain production strategies to fill in gaps in their own competence;

14) learn different styles of speech and writing and learn to vary their language according to the formality of the situation;

Such lists, speculative as they were in the mid-1970s, inspired a group of collaborators in Toronto to undertake a study of good language learning

Of particular interest in both prongs of research and practice is the extent to which cross-cultural variables may facilitate or interfere with strategy use among learners. General conclusions from studies conducted in China, Japan, Israel, Egypt, and Russia, among others, promise more than a glimmer of hope that SBI and autonomous learning are viable avenues to success, cultural differences notwithstanding.

 

 

Table - 2.2 Learning strategies

 

LEARNING STRATEGY	DESCRIPTION
Cognitive Strategies
Deduction   Recombination   Imagery     Auditory Representation   Keyword     Contextualization   Elaboration Transfer   Inferencing	Consciously applying rules to produce or understand the second language Constructing a meaningful sentence or larger language sequence by combining known elements in a new way Relating new information to visual concepts in memory via familiar, easily retrievable visualizations, phrases, or locations Retention of the sound or a similar sound for a word, phrase, or longer language sequence Remembering a new word in the second language by (1) identifying a familiar word in the first language that sounds like or otherwise resembles the new word and (2) generating easily recalled images of some relationship between the new word and the familiar word Placing a word or phrase in a meaningful language sequence Relating new information to other concepts in memory Using previously acquired linguistic and/or conceptual knowledge to facilitate a new language learning task Using available information to guess meanings of new items, predict outcomes, or fill in missing information
Socioaffective Strategies
Cooperation     Question for Clarification	Working with one or more peers to obtain feedback, pool information, or model a language activity Asking a teacher or other native speaker for repetition, paraphrasing, explanation, and/or example

 

Communication Strategies

While learning strategies deal with the receptive domain of intake, memory, storage, and recall, communication strategies pertain to the employment of verbal or nonverbal mechanisms for the productive com­munication of information. In the arena of linguistic interaction, it is some­times difficult, of course, to distinguish between the two, as Tarone (1983) aptly noted, since comprehension and production can occur almost simul­taneously. Nevertheless, as long as one can appreciate the slipperiness of such a dichotomy, it remains a useful distinction in understanding the nature of strategies, especially for pedagogical purposes.

The speculative early research of the 1970s (Varadi 1973 and others) has now led to a great deal of recent attention to communication strategies (see, for example, McDonough 1999; Dornyei 1995; Rost & Ross 1991; Bialystokl 1990a; Bongaerts & Poulisse 1989; Oxford &Crookall 1989). Some time ago, Faerch and Kasper (1983a) defined communication strategies as "potentially conscious plans for solving what to an individual presents itself as a problem in reaching a particular communicative goal." While the research of the last decade does indeed focus largely on the compensatory nature of communication strategies, more recent approaches seem to take a more positive view of communication strategies as elements of an overall strategic competence in which learners bring to bear all the possible facets of their growing competence in order to send clear mes­sages in the second language. Moreover, such strategies may or may not be "potentially conscious"; support for such a conclusion comes from observa­tions of first language acquisition strategies that are similar to those used by adults in second language learning contexts (Bongaerts & Poulisse 1989).

Perhaps the best way to understand what is meant by communication strategy is to look at a typical list of such strategies. Illustration - 6 offers a tax­onomy that reflects accepted categories over several decades of research (adapted from Dornyei 1958).

Dornyei's classification is a good basis for some further comments on communication strategies. We will elaborate here on a few of the categories.