I’m hoping this will be a follow up to the talk Anna Chamot gave yesterday at #APPI, which was more about the why of learning strategies, why they are important and how they can help.  This I’m hoping will be more about the what and the how, what learning strategies are useful and how to teach them.  She did say yesterday that “explicit instruction” is  often necessary, so that might feature.

This is another “live blog” – so apologies for any typos or missing bits, I’m going as fast as I can – I promise to come back later and try and clean things up a bit!

A brief biography of Anna Chamot and her academic background from George Washington University.

Anna Uhl Chamot – Teaching Learning Strategies in the English Classroom

Asking teachers what are your students doing to learn often comes back with and answer relating to what the teachers are asking their learners to do – which is not the same thing!

What are learning Strategies?

  • what learners do to complete a task
  • how learners understand, remember and recall information
  • how learners practice skills to achieve mastery of those skills

Why teach learning strategies?

  • understand how your students learn
  • share the strategies of good language learners – learners may have strategies to share – peer teaching
  • increase students’ self-efficacy (feeling of competence towards a task)
  • create a climate of thinking and reflection
  • use creativity to make learning strategies concrete (move from the abstract to the real)
  • motivate your students and yourself!

Tips on Teaching Learning Strategies:

  • build on students’ current learning strategies – all learners have learning strategies, but not all the strategies are successful ones.  Often it’s possible to transfer strategies from one environment to another – learners may feel that what they learn in one situation doesn’t apply to what they learn in another.  Think about what they are already bringing to the classroom.
  • model how to use the learning strategy – language can be a barrier to communicating successful learning strategies, so when learners don’t have the linguistic ability to understand learning strategy instruction, they need to see it modelled, teachers need to communicate the process, not just the task.
  • name the strategy in English (see bibliography at the end of this piece for strategies and their “names”
  • give examples of how to use the strategy (this is similar to the modelling)
  • let the students choose their own strategies – people are different.  If it doesn’t work for a learner, don’t force it on them.

Metacognitive strategies:  (these are applicable to any task in life, not just language learning)

  • Planning:  understand the task / set goals / organise materials  / find resources / is it working? – revise the plan if necessary.
  • Monitoring:  while you work on the task – check your progress on the task / check your comprehension (do you understand?) / check your production (are you making sense?).
  • Evaluation:  (post-task) – assess how well they accomplished it, teach students to self-assess and self-evaluate / assess how well the learning strategies they used worked – if not, try a new one?  / Identify changes you’ll make the next time you have a similar task to do.
  • Self-management:  manage your own learning – determine how you learn best / arrange conditions that help you learn / seek opportunities for practice / focus your attention on the task.

Social Learning Strategies:

Cooperation (working with others):  complete tasks / build confidence / give and receive feedback / learn from each other.

INSTRUCTIONAL CYCLE: (see graphic)

PREPARATION – ways to discover students’ learning strategies:  students describe how they figured something out / discussion (how do you do this, how do you learn new words, how do you know you’re right?) / class survey of learning strategies (find someone who)  / learning strategy diaries

PRESENTATION – model the strategy by acting it out (pretend difficulty and go through the thought process by “thinking aloud”)  /  ask the students if they use the strategy / give the strategy a name / tell the students WHEN  and HOW to use it / make it concrete with visuals and realia (see also icons given in the websites in the bibliography).

PRACTICE – choose a challengeing task / name the strategy to practice / remind students to use a strategy / ask student to identify the strategy / encourage students to use them independently

SELF-EVALUATION – discuss how they used the strategy / keep learning stratgy logs / identify and defned preferred strategies / relfect on themselves as strategic thinkes

EXPANSION  find new uses / contexts for thr strategy /  survey strategies used by others / teach a stragey to a friend or sibling / collect tips on using strategies / make a learning strategy book for other students (e.g. from this years class to next years class)

Developing Metacognition:

  • model your own thinking
  • students explain their thoughts about learning
  • students describe their plan for completing a language task
  • students explain how they monitor a task
  • students evaluate their own performance on a task

Websites / Bibliography:

Resource guides for teaching language learning strategies in primary, secondary and hihger education:  www.nclrc.org

List of Learning strategies and research references:  www.calla.ws

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