Learning to Learn: Why Do We Need Varied Strategy Training?
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adults’ strategies, beliefs and attitudes, it should be focused, long-term, and recursive; the task constitutes a tremendous, though not unfeasible, challenge.
7. Conclusions The issues discussed in this article, concerned with learning, language learning, and strategy training, are becoming increasingly important in language education across the European Union. They are related to possibilities of finding practical solutions which could allow the successful accomplishment of the crucial goal of ensuring learner self-directed, or autonomous, learning, and language learning in particular. Learner training seems to be an advisable and promising solution. Both theory and research confirm that, given opportunities to get to know about and practise the use of varied strategies for language learning and use, language learners can become more effective users of strategies for continued, or life-long, learning. This, in turn, can help preserve the multilingual environment of the EU with all its cultural and linguistic diversity. However, as Tudor (1997) rightly stresses, strategy training is a pedagogical task and, like the whole teaching venture, it requires the teacher to make several decisions concerning the content, form, and structure of instruction. As specified above, there are various options for how to conduct the training. These may differ in the degree of instructional explicitness in learner awareness-raising and may be either separate from or integrated into a language teaching programme to differing degrees. Obviously, if learners are to become more autonomous and able to act strategically in response to the requirements and challenges posed by the complex task of language learning, many of them will need guidance and scaffolding provided by ‘strategic’ teachers. To become strategic, teachers also need training; they need opportunities to experience the effectiveness of varied strategy use, that is, understand and appreciate the value of not only cognitive and metacognitive, but also motivational, social and affective strategies. Researchers do not always agree on strategy training issues; nevertheless, Wenden’s 1991 practical and well-tested guidelines for effective training still seem worth recommending. Thus, firstly, strategy training should be informed. Through blind training learners can become better able to