Aug

20

Language Learning Strategies

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Language learning strategies have been studied by scholars since 1970’s producing a number of research papers in second language acquisition and cognitive psychology. Initially, the studies concentrated on detecting strategies used by good language learners (Rubin, 1975) while cognitive psychology attempted to find the influence of strategy training on the learner, which inspired the research into why some individuals could learn effectively whereas others experience some significant problems. It became essential to discover how to efficiently and effectively process information to be retained and how to teach these strategies to learners who had not used them before.

O’Malley and Chamot (1990) applied Anderson’s Model of Metal Operation (Anderson 1985) in learning how to learn a foreign language. Anderson (1985) believes that there are two kinds of knowledge involved in the acquisition of skills: declarative and procedural. Declarative knowledge is static, factual, or comprising of what the learner actually knows about a given topic. Procedural knowledge is the ability to understand and apply rules to solve problems subconsciously, a dynamic information. The two kinds are to be used at different stages of the learning process.

Researchers operating in the area of second language acquisition conducted their research independently of cognitive psychologists. Attempts were made to define what a good language learner does to gain proficiency (Rubin, 1975 and Stern, 1975). All the techniques used by a good language learner have been termed ‘strategies’ and as such described and classified. Building on this research, both Rubin (1981) as well as Naiman, Frohlich, Stern, and Todesco (1978) proposed classification of language learning strategies


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