Learning to Learn: Why Do We Need Varied Strategy Training?
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paying attention, finding out about language learning, setting goals and objectives, organizing, seeking practice possibilities, self-monitoring, or self-evaluating; affective strategies help to regulate emotions and motivations via progressive relaxation, deep breathing, using music or laughter, making positive statements, taking risks wisely, self-rewarding, listening to one’s body, writing a language learning diary, sharing feelings; social strategies allow for the intensification of contacts and learning with others via, for example, asking questions for clarification, verification, or correction; cooperating with peers and proficient users of the target language, developing cultural understanding as well as awareness of others’ thoughts and feelings (for details, see Oxford 1990; cf. Oxford 1989). It must be noted, however, that Oxford does not separate learner ‘communication strategies’, or strategies of language use, from ‘learning strategies’, which Ellis (1994) and Cohen (1998) in particular indicate as a shortcoming. Instead, she provides an extended taxonomy of all identified learner strategies and includes her own, reduced list of behaviours that other researchers would call ‘communication strategies’. She locates them in the group of compensation strategies. Oxford (1990) and, later, Hsiao and Oxford (2002) justify this fact by claiming that, firstly, separating language learning from its use is difficult; secondly, learning and use may take place at the same time; and thirdly, these two strategy categories overlap to a great extent. Nonetheless, the researchers do not refrain from admitting that future research should reconsider Ellis’s and Cohen’s differentiation between ‘language learning strategies’ and ‘language use strategies’. Still, what is crucial to practitioners is the fact that Oxford goes beyond other researchers’ focus on cognitive and metacognitive processes and enriches the concept of learning strategies considerably. She highlights the interrelatedness and interdependence of human cognition and emotional self and introduces two separate groups of varied affective and social strategies. In her later work, Oxford (2002: 128) stresses that the learner is not merely ‘a cognitive/metacognitive information-processing machine’; the learner must be seen as a ‘whole person’ – an intellectual, social, emotional, and physical being. Additionally, language teachers interested in diagnosing their students’ current patterns of strategy use can reach for a practical paper-and-pencil questionnaire The Strategy Inventory of Language Learning (SILL) (see Oxford 1990: 283–300).