Naomi Kriss & Rigoberto Martinez

11/27/11

Professor Bede McCormack, Ph.D.

Second Language Acquisition and Learning, Fall 2011

Research Paper

Literature Review

Learning strategies are tools that learners can apply to the problem of acquiring a new language.  As such they represent a major difference between childhood second language acquisition and that undertaken by post-adolescent and adult learners.  Research suggests that while adult second language learners have a greater rate of acquisition than do first language learners, ultimate attainment of the target language is best achieved by younger learners.  Selinker (1972) suggested that this was due to fossilization of errors or misunderstandings in the learner’s interlanguage, the system of understanding that the learner is using between his or her first and second languages.  Some recent researchers such as Chamot and O’Malley (1990) suggest that explicit instruction on and in the application of learning strategies can lead to better second language acquisition outcomes.   When early inquiries were made into the use of learning strategies in SLA, the interested began their research by looking at what the “good language learners” were doing, Rubin (1975) and Stern (1975), to see if there was a set of activities, processes, or ways of thinking that was common to this group.  Then once they isolated these behaviors (learning strategies) it seemed simple enough to teach them, and that the result would be better learning outcomes.  The research has proved anything but simple.  

The most glaring difficult is something we encountered in our own research, which is that of the categorizing.  “There is a tendency for researchers to generate different sets of learning strategies, resulting in overlapping and poorly defined categories” (Ellis, 1985).  Any body of research, which is examining something but can’t consistently describe or measure it is going to be fraught with confusion and inconsistency.

There are two other obvious challenges to conducting, analyzing and interpreting research on the topic of learning strategies.  The first is how to know what learning strategy a learner is using, when and why they are using that strategy.   This was addressed by Vann and Abraham (1990):

“Recent research on learning strategies has yielded conflicting findings and generated limited success in learner training.  These problems may be rooted in inadequate knowledge of the actual strategies used by unsuccessful learners in contrast to what they report doing.”

We cannot peer into the mind of a learner and see a learning strategy at work.  Researchers must, instead, rely on some external indication from the learner.  To this end self-reported questionnaires became the standard for this type of research.  Investigators asked the informants to tell them about their learning strategies; how and when they used them.  But everyone wants to look smart and everyone wants to give the right answer.  This could easily and unintentionally inflate their use of learning strategies, or inaccurately describe their application.  This would skew the results.

The other problem is that one might have a multitude of strong strategies, but misapply them.  Using a task-based strategy aimed at facilitating rote memorization, (flashcards, for example) will be of little or no value when one is actually engaged in a more complex process like the application of a discrete grammatical rule (say forming past-tense verbs in English.)  Vann and Abaraham (1990) note that in their research: “some unsuccessful used relatively many strategies, and more important, the unsuccessful learners used many of the same strategies as the successful learners.”  It is not just a matter of knowing a multitude of strategies but knowing when and how to apply them.

In order for learning strategy use to be effective, it appears that the learners need to have a number of strategies, and an awareness of when and how to apply them.  Chamot and others have created models which call for weeks or months or instruction on the explanation, application, practice and assessment of acquiring learning strategies, something which we thin would take valuable away from the study and use of the second language itself.

This issue is carefully addressed in a paper by Jeffra Flaitz, Carine Feyten, Sallie Fox and Keya Mukherjee (1995) who found that meta-cognitive awareness training might be a good answer to the challenge of the explicit instruction and reinforcement needed to create a wide, working repertoire of learning strategies.  In their study, “an experimental group of 130 students of college-level Spanish I and II received Metacognitive Awareness Raising (MAR)- a single 50-minute session which, by means of brainstorming and jigsaw activities, dynamically involved students in developing a general, overarching awareness of language learning strategies rather than exposing them to the selection, presentation, and practice of a set of specific strategies over a period of weeks or months.”

Today’s schools have high student-teacher ratios, overcrowding, and increased time demands related to mandated testing.  Teaching, reinforcing and assessing strategies according to models like CALLA can seem unrealistically time consuming.  Flaitz and his colleagues were able to see an increase positive learning outcomes resultant from a far more efficient focus on a larger more generalized awareness of language learning strategies.  Their empirical evidence suggest that, “in the absence of an opportunity for the presentation and practice of well-defined language learning strategies, the achievement of students may still be enhanced by the development of a more general strategic awareness.”

Locastro (1994) wrote that “Oxford (1989) suggests that a more important concern n the choice of language learning strategies may be the purpose for which a language is learned,” but she went farther to say that it might also be the context in which the learning is taking place.  She looked at learning strategies in a Japanese EFL class and found that the learning strategy repertoire of the students was intimately tied to the purpose (learning to read and translate foreign language materials) and the context (the educational tradition) was one based in the Grammar-Translation Method.  

Locastro’s work and that of Flaitz and his co-authors are the beginning of new perspectives on the issue of learning strategies in SLA.  The research will continue to be refined and expanded in pursuit of the perfect balance of depth versus breadth, context and purpose, and no doubt in other directions as well.  It is important that the categories be defined in some consistent manner, and for the means of reporting and measurement to be improved.

Methodology

In order to analyze the effectiveness of using few and multiple learning strategies in learning another language the researchers have compared English language learners who apply various different learning styles to those who use very few.  In total there were 26 intermediate English language learners who participated in this study.  The participants mostly had Spanish as their first language with the exception of three students (two student’s L1 is Russian and the other student’s L1 is Arabic).  In addition, the participant’s ages ranged from 34 to 57.

The researchers first administered a questionnaire that elicited self-reported data on the use of student’s various learning strategies.  It is important to note that this test did not explicitly ask the students if they use multiple or few strategies but rather this test had students circle numerous examples of learning strategies that they use to learn English.  Based on this information collected the researchers would then classify the students into two distinct groups (students who use few learning strategies and students who use multiple learning strategies). 

Following the establishment of these two groups, the researchers then taught a new language concept to both groups simultaneously.  The language concept that the researchers briefly taught the students was the different meanings and uses of there, their, and they're.  The researchers then instructed the language learners to review this concept using their learning strategy or the multiple varieties of strategies that they have previously reported.  Subsequently the students took a test on the new language concept. 

Results

Based on the students’ performance on the assessment test we have noticed that the students who use few strategies were more consistent in their results. These students test scores hovered around a score of 70 and 80; they had a mean of 74.5, a mode of 80.0, a median of 80.0 and a standard deviation of 13.54.  These scores greatly contrasted the students who used multiple strategies, which were much more spread out. These students test scores had a mean of 72.0, a mode of 90.0, a median of 80.0, and a standard deviation of 24.26.   

References

Chamot, Anna U. (2009). The CALLA Handbook: Implementing the cognitive academic

        language learning approach (2nd Edition). White Plains, NY: Longman.

Chamot, Anna U., and O’Malley, Michael J. (1990).  Learning Strategies in Second

       Language Acquisition. Melbourne, Australia: Cambridge University Press.

Jeffra Flaitz, Carine Feyten, Sallie Fox and Keya Mukherjee (1995). Raising General Awareness

       of Language Learning Strategies: A Little Bit Goes a Long Way. Hispania , Vol. 78, No. 2,

       pp. 337-348. Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/345434

Roberta J. Vann and Roberta G. Abraham (1990). Strategies of Unsuccessful Language

        Learners. TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 177-198. Retrieved from:

        http://www.jstor.org/stable/3586898

Rubin, J. (1975). What the 'good language learner' can teach us. TESOL Quarterly, 9(1),

41-51. Stern, H. H. "What Can We Learn from the Good Language Learner?". Canadian Modern Language Review 31 (4): 304–318.

Virginia Locastro (1994). Learning Strategies and Learning Environments. TESOL Quarterly,

       Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 409-414. Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3587445

APPENDIX A:

Student’s Questionnaire

Age:

Native Country (where are you from):

Native Language (what is your first language?)

When did you come to live in America?  

How many years ago?  

How old were you?

How long did you go to school in your home country?

How often do you use English outside of the classroom?:  (Circle One)

All the time       Most of the time         Some of the time        Rarely          Never

What are some things you do to learn English? (Please circle all of the strategies you use):

⇿ Watch TV in English

⇿ Try to talk with English speakers for practice

⇿ Take classes

⇿ Listen to music in English

⇿ Take notes in class

⇿ Use dictionaries when reading new words

⇿ Make flashcards

⇿ Role play

⇿ Translate things that are written in English

⇿ Try to read the newspaper or magazines in English

⇿ Read English books to your kids

⇿ Use English/Spanish dictionaries

⇿ Work with someone who wants to learn Spanish, and help each other learn.

⇿ Try to talk to people in English different places (at the bank, the grocery store, in a cab or in the library).

⇿ Use context to try to figure out words

⇿ Focus on meaning in order to learn new vocabulary

⇿ Make a guess about how a story will go

⇿ Relate new ideas to your own life, try to make personal connections

⇿ Use cognates (words that sound similar in Spanish and English, like Café and Coffee)

⇿ Use imagery (make a picture in your mind to help you remember something)

⇿ Sound something out aloud

⇿ Use graphic organizers (charts)

⇿ Try to pay attention to just the most important words or ideas

⇿ Work with another person to help figure something out

⇿ Try to say something in a different way or go around an issue you can’t explain

APPENDIX B:

Their, There, and They're Test

Directions:

Fill in the blanks with the appropriate choice—their, there, or they're.

1. The Smith family is going on a vacation to Florida. __________ very happy because they have never gone to Florida.

2. "Oh, no! _________ are monkeys in my room!" screamed Mr. Martinez before he fainted on the dining room floor.

3. Nothing makes Lidyia happier than a nice cold bedroom after a long day at work. _________ she will sleep all night with a smile on her face.

4. Mrs. And Mrs. Naber had a very successful bakery business. Now  __________ children can go to a good college.

5. Dolly hates dogs more than snakes or cockroaches.  She believes that canines are loathsome creatures because _________ only goal in life is to kill her front lawn with urine.

6. Behind my bed _________ are lots of papers with very important information on them.

7. The knives in John’s kitchen are encrusted with bits of brownie and smears of dried mustard. _________ is no way a doctor would ever consider operating with any instrument that Roseanne had washed!

8. Bentley, our neighbor's dog, has toenails that are so long that ________ curled like macaroni noodles at the ends of his paws.

9. My mother always worries that ________ might be ketchup inside her favorite sandwich.  If that happened she would be really angry because she just simply loathes ketchup.

10. _________ were six really big sheets drying on the clothesline in the backyard yesterday.