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Małgorzata Dąbrowska
and explore possibilities of conscious strategy development in pre-service teacher education. The experiment was carried out as part of English teacher trainees’ methodological preparation. A long-term intensive strategy training scheme was integrated with the second-year Methodology and Lesson Observation courses run till the academic year 2004/2005 in the Higher Vocational State School in Biała Podlaska, Poland. The control group in the experiment received traditional instruction, while the instruction in the experimental group was enriched with strategy training ideas. The dependent variables were changes in the frequency of use of Oxford’s (1990) six strategy categories and alterations of learner beliefs and opinions, operationalized in terms of declarations made by the subjects in a series of questionnaires. The independent variable was strategy training, operationalized in the form of the Learning to Learn instruction, based primarily on Ellis and Sinclair’s (1989) and Oxford’s (1990) training suggestions and tasks. It was supposed to develop the students’ knowledge of and skills in using those strategies which were diagnosed as unknown and/or inadequately used at the beginning of the experiment. The scheme was divided into four parts, each devoted to strategy training with a different language skill (i.e. listening, reading, writing, speaking), and related to the students’ Practical English work. There were 22 upper-intermediate/advanced (B2/C1) Polish students of English in the experimental group and 20 Polish students of English at the same proficiency level in the control group. The study lasted one academic year (September/October 2003 – May/June 2004). The experimental research design envisaged: (a) pre-, (in the experimental group also while-), and post-experiment examinations of patterns of strategy use by the students and (b) pre- and post-experiment surveys of student beliefs and opinions. During the experiment, and the strategy training itself, the author used data collected within a series of formal, paper-and-pencil questionnaires and checklists: (1) Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) (Oxford 1990: 293–300), (2) Instruments Used for Assessing Background Factors (Abraham & Vann 1987: 99–102) accompanied by Background Factors Questionnaire (self-prepared), (3) The Beliefs About Language Learning Inventory (BALLI) (Horwitz 1987: 127–128), (4) self-prepared, structured tools based on Oxford’s (1990) original instruments: What Types of Learning Strategies Do You Use with (the skill named: Listening / Reading / Speaking / Writing) Tasks? (5) Taking Your Emotional Temperature and Stress Checklists (Oxford 1990: 188–190) applied