- The Origins of the Term
"Strategy" - Learner Strategies and Learning
Strategies - Defining the Term
"Strategy" - Avoiding
confusion - Plans or
processes? - Conclusion
- References
The importance of learning strategies is now widely
recognized in all areas of education. As Oxford says, "under
various names such as learning skills, learning-to-learns skills,
thinking skills, and problem-solving skills, learning strategies
are the way students learn a wide range of subjects, from native
language reading through electronics trouble-shooting to new
languages" (1990:2-3). This article reviews some definitions and
debates about the nature of learning strategies within the field
of applied linguistics and ELT.
The
Origins of the Term "Strategy"
The word
"strategy" comes from the Greek "strategos", a root that
originally meant "trick" or "deception". The Greeks later used
the term to describe army generals: a general was one who could
trick the enemy. The term first became current in English in the
late 18th and early 19th century when "it denoted the overall
military and psychological plans that a general made for a
campaign" (Encyclopaedia Britannica 1985).
The term was first used in Cognitive Psychology
in 1956 by Bruner, Goodnow and Austin in a paper presented at a
meeting of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was an
auspicious meeting. The paper, which contained the first
systematic attempt to consider concept formation from a cognitive
perspective (Eysenck and Keane 1990:7), was presented alongside a
preliminary paper by Chomsky on his theory of language, George
Miller's paper on the magic number 7 in short term memory and
Newell Shaw and Simon's "General Problem Solver", a computational
model from which later theories relating to problem-solving and
production systems are derived.
In Applied Linguistics, strategy research dates
back to 1966 when Aaron Carton published his study, "The Method
of Inference in Foreign Language Study". This was followed in the
mid 1970s by a series of empirical studies of "good" language
learners, notably by Rubin (1975), Stern (1975) and Naiman,
Fröhlich, Stern and Todesco (1978). Since the late 1970s
applied linguistics has turned more and more to cognitive science
to provide the theoretical framework for language learning and
this has led to valuable research into a whole range of
strategies used in vocabulary learning tasks (Cohen and Aphek
1980, 1981), reading comprehension (Brown et al 1983, Chipman
Segal and Glaser 1985; Dansereau 1985) and writing (Flower and
Hayes 1981) to name only a few.
Learner
Strategies and Learning Strategies
A distinction is sometimes made in
Applied Linguistics between learner strategies and learning
strategies. Tarone (1981), for example, distinguishes three sets
of learner strategies: learning strategies, production strategies
and communication strategies. According to this view, learning
strategies are the means by which the learner processes the L2
input to develop linguistic knowledge. Production strategies, on
the other hand, involve learners' attempts to use L2 knowledge
they have already acquired efficiently, clearly and with minimum
effort (in Faerch and Kasper 1983:72-73 and Ellis 1985:13) while
communication strategies consist of learners' attempts to
communicate meanings that are beyond their linguistic competence
by using such devices as paraphrase or gesture.
While the distinction between learner
strategies (i.e. any strategies used by learners) and learning
strategies (i.e. strategies used to process input) is a logical
one and has been maintained by writers such as Wenden (1987,
1989) and Skehan (1989), this has not been the case in the United
States where the term "learning strategy" is used to refer to any
type of strategy used by learners. This is not a confusing as it
might appear, however, since writers on both sides of the
Atlantic (and elsewhere) now recognise that learning can take
place through communication (Faerch and Kasper 1983: xvii) and
production, as when a writer is forced to reprocess "old"
information and language at a deeper level in order to express
new meanings or more subtle nuances. Strategies that are used to
manipulate or transform cognitive material are now generally
known as "cognitive strategies"
Nevertheless, strategies are not
easy to define. As Ellis (1993:9) points out, "there is no
agreement on exactly what (…) learning strategies are, how many
of them there are, what they consist of, etc".
One problem is that the term "strategy" is
widely used in psychology, education and applied linguistics,
each of which has its own interests and its own theoretical
approaches and research methodology. These differences, although
they should not be exaggerated, have been notable in the past. In
applied linguistics, for example, earlier definitions of
strategies tended to stress their
behavioural aspects simply because much research at that time was
based on observation of what good language learners did to learn
a language, whereas psychology took a more "mentalist" approach.
Thus, Rubin (1975:43) originally defines strategies as
"techniques or devices which a learner may use to acquire
knowledge" and twelve years later she still stressed "what
learners do to learn" as well as "what learners do to regulate
their learning" (Rubin and Wenden 1987:19. italics in
original).
By contrast, Gagné (1977:35) sees
strategies as "skills by means of which learners regulate their
own internal processes of attending, learning, remembering and
thinking", and more recently Best (1986:463) writes: "Strategies
are seen in behaviour, but the behaviour implies some sort mental
effort. A strategy can therefore be defined as a move, trial or
probe designed to effect some change in a problem and provide
information by doing so." Best divides strategies into two broad
classes: heuristics and algorithms, which are described in the
psychology literature in connection with
problem-solving.
These differences are nevertheless questions of
emphasis rather than fundamental disagreements and the same is
true of distinctions made within particular
disciplines.
In education, for example, a "strategic approach" has
been contrasted with a "deep approach" and a "surface approach"
(Entwistle 1987:60). What was most distinctive about the
strategic approach was the use of well-planned and carefully
organised study methods or "study strategies". More recently,
however, study skills or strategies have been introduced within a
more general framework that emphasises "deep strategic
approaches" (Entwistle 1987:69).
Similarly, differences in emphasis (admittedly
more subtle ones) are to be found in applied linguistics among
writers who have turned to information processing models for a
theoretical framework in which to describe learning strategies.
Rubin (in Wenden and Rubin 1987:19) following O'Malley et al
(1983) defines learning strategies as "any set of operations,
steps plans routines used by the learner to facilitate the
obtaining, storage retrieval and use of information". This
definition, while excellent as far as it goes, seems to be based
partly on the structural multi-store model of memory and says
nothing about levels or depth of processing. Significantly,
although Wenden and Rubin mention learning style in passing
(1987:22), this concept-, which includes "deep" and "shallow"
approaches-, is not developed in their work.
O'Malley and Chamot (1990), on the other hand,
take a more process-based view derived from Anderson's
(1983-1985) ACT* cognitive architecture. For O'Malley and Chamot,
learning strategies are "special ways of processing information
that enhance comprehension, learning or retention of the
information" (1990:1), and while advocating that certain
strategies should be taught to all students, they recognise (at
least implicitly) that different learners prefer to process
information at different levels. For example, "a visual learner
may naturally use imagery as a preferred strategy, and a
field-independent or analytic learner may naturally gravitate
toward strategies such as grouping and deduction"
(1990:163).
When we learn a new concept, we
need to know which attributes are relevant and which irrelevant.
We also need to know in what way the new concept is similar to or
differs from other concepts and whether these are related
hierarchically or not.
Irrelevant attributes may lead to definitions
that are either too broad or too narrow. One definition which is
too broad, I think, is that offered by Wenden (in Wenden and
Rubin 1987:6-7), who claims that learner strategies refer not
only to learner behaviours but also "to what learners know about
the strategies they use" and "what learners know about aspects of
their (…) learning other than the strategies they use". While
such knowledge is invaluable for effective strategy training (see
Oxford 1990:12), and may lead to learners discovering new
strategies unassisted, the proof of the pudding is surely in the
eating.
By contrast, Seliger's (1984) distinction
between strategies and tactics makes the concept of strategy too
narrow. Seliger claims that strategies are "basic abstract
categories of processing" in contrast to tactics, which "evolve
to meet the demands of the moment or fluctuate more slowly…"
(1984:41). This distinction recalls Gagné's (1977:36)
claim that "cognitive strategies are largely independent of
content, and generally apply to all kinds (of content)". But as
Gagné himself recognises, "these mental operations must
have something to work on – they cannot be exercised in a vacuum"
(1977:37).
Seliger's distinction would only be meaningful
if strategies were innate and tactics were learned (which he does
not say) since all strategies must begin by meeting the demands
of some moment or other, whether or not they are later
generalised to other context. If, as Harlow (1959) claims,
strategies consist of a general skill or a simple rule or code
(Gross 1992:196), then it is likely that strategies become
generalised in much the same way as skills through "tuning". (See
also O'Malley and Chamot 1990:43).
Another problem that arises when
defining strategies is whether to consider them as a process or a
product of learning or both.
Both Faerch and Kasper (1983) and Ellis (1985)
make a distinction between strategies and processes. Ellis
(1985:166) defines strategies as "plans for controlling the other
in which a sequence of operations is to be performed" while
processes are "operations involved in the development or
realisation of a plan".
In this sense, processes are subordinate to
strategies. Faerch and Kasper (1983:29), on the other hand, point
out that among other possible explanations, the term strategy may
refer to "a specific subclass of processes". My own view is that
it is not possible to separate the plan from the process
(otherwise strategies cannot be described in behavioural terms
either). In this sense, I would agree with Faerch and Kasper in
considering strategies to be special kinds of
processes.
The literature on learning
strategies is confusing because, in the past, psychology,
education and applied linguistics had quite different research
agendas. In applied linguistics, the move from describing
strategies in terms of behaviour to explaining them in terms of
underlying mental processes reflects the abandoning of
behaviourism as a general theory of learning in favour of models
drawn from cognitive psychology. However, the problems of
deciding whether strategies as universally valid procedures or a
reflection of individual learning style, or whether they are best
considered as generalised skills as distinct from responses to
concrete situations, are difficult to grasp without
understanding, too, how theories of memory and problem-solving
have evolved over the years.
The broader challenge is understand how
learning strategies interact with the learner's existing
communicative competence in order to enhance learning. O'Malley
and Chamot's adoption of Anderson's ACT* cognitive architecture
(which may, itself, soon be superseded by connectivist models)
unwittingly challenged the notion of language as a discrete set
of competences, among which strategic competence originally
played a relatively minor role, suggesting, as many psychologists
already believed, that language is a skill like any other and
that language learning is parasitic upon other more general
cognitive processes.
In a sense, the wheel has come full circle in applied
linguistics: Behaviourism was atheorethical in that it was not
interested in mental processes; by failing to make explicit the
theoretical framework on which they based their description of
learning strategies, O'Malley and Chamot and Oxford simply
exchanged one set of recipes for another.
But teachers always need to be clear about the
theoretical underpinnings of what they teach in the classroom,
don't they?
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Douglas Andrew Town
BSc
(Hons) Psychology, MA (English Language Teaching), Diploma in
Translation (Spanish)
Profesor de la
Universidad de
Belgrano, Argentina (Licenciatura en Inglés).