Uninformed Strategy Instruction

There are two common approaches to strategy instruction. In uninformed strategy instruction, students work through materials and activities designed to elicit the use of specific strategies, but students are not informed of the name, purpose or value of the specific learning strategy (O'Malley & Chamot, 1995, p. 153). The most common forms of uninformed strategy instruction are textbook rubrics. Language textbooks are filled with instructions such as: 'Read the text, are any of your ideas mentions?' 'Close your book, can you remember the advice?' 'In pairs, practice the shop dialogue.' These rubrics assume that learners will identify and use the appropriate metacognitive, memory and social strategies. The cues for learners to use specific strategies such as self-monitoring, memorizing and co-operation respectively are embedded in these textbook rubrics (O'Malley & Chamot, 1995, p.153; Cohen, 1999, pp. 79-80). The assumptions underlying uninformed strategy instruction is learners will learn to use the language learning strategy cued by the material and activities presented in textbook rubrics (O'Malley & Chamot, 1995, pp. 153-4). However, pedagogically speaking, there are 3 weaknesses with this assumption. First, of all, there is the reality that not all learners will be linguistically proficient to understand instructions that have been written in the target language. Secondly, not all learners will have an awareness of the specific strategy being cued. And thirdly, without a metacognitive awareness about language learning strategy use and purpose, learners will lose opportunities to increase their strategy repertoire, to successfully transfer strategies to new tasks, and to maintain efficient and long term strategy use (Wenden, 1987, p.159) in their language learning career.

Direct and Integrated Instruction

The second instructional approach is a mirror image of uninformed strategy instruction. Direct and integrated instruction (O'Malley & Chamot, 1995, p.153) informs learners of the value and purpose of learning strategies and helps learners to use, identify and develop learning strategies in a systematic way as they learn the target language. In the direct approach to strategy instruction, the teacher raises learner awareness of the purpose and rationale for strategy use, identifies the specific strategy being used, and systematically provides opportunities for practice and self-evaluation (Oxford, 1990, p.170; Wenden, 1987, p.159). Through this direct and integrated approach to strategy instruction learners become reactive learners as they increase their awareness, practice, use and monitoring of the language learning strategies they are using while learning a second or foreign language. The learner outcome is an efficient learner who has developed the skills to successfully organize and conduct their own learning events (Wenden, 1987, p.11).

How Do We Integrate Learning Instruction into Language Lessons?

From the above, we saw that to help students 'learn better', teaching agendas would have to focus systematically (Oxford, 1990, p. 170) on raising students awareness of language learning strategies, to highlight the relationship between strategy use and language learning tasks, and to methodically increase students' existing repertoire of language learning strategies. In this final section, we will look at a framework strategy instruction and suggest that language course books can be ideal resources for integrating strategy instruction into ESL/EFL classrooms.

Basic Structure for Introducing Strategies

1. Preview teaching material and activities to identify strategies for instruction
2. Present strategy by naming it and explaining when and why to use it
3. Model the strategy.  Provide opportunities to practice the strategy with various activities/tasks
4. Develop students' ability to evaluate strategy use.  Develop skills to transfer strategy use to new tasks

(Adapted from Scope and Sequence Frameworks for Learning Strategy Instruction in O'Malley & Chamot, 1995, pp. 158-9)

During preliminary stages of strategy instruction, teachers will probably take a very controlled and teacher-fronted approach of instruction. As teachers become experienced in strategies instruction, they should feel free to adjust the contents and intensity of each step to establish a closer match between their instructional approach and their particular teaching context. The time required for each step is variable. Depending on the difficulty of the activity and the group of learners, it may take a few minutes, or it may only require a brief comment such as “Did you get it right?”(to cue self-evaluation). As strategy instruction continues with the same group of learners and core strategies become 'recycled', teachers should experiment with the degree of teacher control and time allotted for each step in the instructional sequence.

Instructional resources available for strategies instruction consist of two kinds: published materials designed to teach learning strategies (e.g. Oxford, 1990; Ellis and Sinclair, 2002; Rubin and Thompson, 1994); and language-learning strategies presented in course books. The embedded strategies designed into course book activities are 'perfect' instructional resources to integrate strategy instruction into regular language classes. As instructional resources, these 'embedded' strategies can be identified, modeled and explained by teachers: and practiced, monitored and self-evaluated by students while they are learning the foreign or second language. In addition, since course books tend to recycle strategies, learners will become more efficient in their use, knowledge and development of key language learning strategies.