ISSUES IN LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGY RESEARCH AND TEACHING

TLDR

Learning strategies are the thoughts and actions students use to achieve learning goals, and research has identified the strategies employed by second‑language learners and shown that strategy instruction can improve performance for less successful students. The article examines current issues in language‑learning strategy research that impact teachers and learners, and proposes directions for future research on underexplored topics. The authors outline eight key issues—identification, terminology, learner characteristics, culture, instruction type, instructional language, strategy transfer, and instructional models—and discuss each through a review of existing research.

Abstract

Learning strategies are the thoughts and actions that individuals use to accomplish a learning goal. Extensive research has identified the learning strategies used by students of a variety of second and foreign languages and a somewhat smaller body of research has documented the effectiveness of helping less successful language students improve their performance through learning strategy instruction. This article discusses current issues in language learning strategy research that affect teachers and learners of foreign languages. These issues include: identification procedures of learning strategies, terminology and classification of strategies, the effects of learner characteristics on strategy use, the effects of culture and context on strategy use, explicit and integrated strategy instruction, language of instruction, transfer of strategies to new tasks, and models for language learning strategy instruction. These eight issues are explored through a discussion of existing research that illumines the issues. Suggestions are presented for future research on issues that have not yet been thoroughly explored.