Teaching strategies learning EFL

Introduction

As a teacher of English as a foreign language, in countries where the native language is Spanish, I am concerned today to see how dedicated to teaching a language educators do not identify what is a teaching strategy and learning strategy.

It is for this reason, raising questions, research and articles like this where we will see a brief outline among which are: definitions, theories of great researchers of language and finally a brief summary of what would be the teaching strategies a foreign language in particular.

Research, read, discover, apply new strategies to achieve a significant learning or higher quality in our students must be a goal that motivates us to read, to write to scrutinize new research.

Keywords: strategy, learning strategy teaching English as a foreign language.

Content

Speaking of teaching strategies and learning English, we must first begin by establishing difference and define what is a strategy, what we call teaching strategies and what we call learning strategies that differences exist between teaching strategies and strategies learning.

When we talk about teaching strategies must begin by establishing that these are used by teachers from the act of planning itself. Teaching strategies routes plotted, organized and contribute to the smooth development of content.

It is for this reason are defined as: as the set of decisions taken by the teacher to guide teaching in order to promote student learning. These are general guidelines about how to teach discipline content considering what we want our students to understand why and what for. (Rebeca Anijovich Silvia Mora).

Teaching strategies

Speaking of teaching strategies today involves not just a traditionalist approach to methods and research in the past, this also involves a look into the future of teaching and learning.Today with technological advances, teaching strategies go beyond a plan in which guidelines are drawn.

At the present time the teacher has to take into account that students are characterized by what has been called a virtual mind. The school and teachers can not ignore the new ways of reading and interpreting the world with which current students address the content and homework.

Carles Monereo identifies and explains some features of this new group:

They handle a variety of resources for information: websites, hard drives, cell phones, virtual communities, and so on; They use and decode different types of language that also not presented sequentially, but simultaneously, such as animations, photographs, graphics, text, hypertext; create new productions from parts of other products (copy-paste);They are relativistic par excellence; on the one hand, because the web is constantly updated, and on the other, because all information is considered valid.

For this reason in defining strategies teaching and learning strategies have to take into account all these factors, which go hand in hand with modern times.

Already from previous years are considered teaching strategies and procedures that the agent used reflexively teaching and flexible to promote the achievement of learning in students.(Mayer, 1984; Shuell, 1988; Farmer & Wolf 1991).

Teaching strategies are also considered as means or resources to provide educational assistance. For this reason the teacher must have a broad strategies baggage, knowing what function and how they can be used properly. (Frida, AB & Hernandez, RG 1999), other definitions of teaching strategies are based more on teaching, an example of this is the definition presented by Rebeca Anijovich & Silvia Mora, in defining teaching strategies as a set of decisions taken by the teacher to guide teaching in order to promote student learning. Here they are presented rather as general guidelines about how to teach a content considering what we want our students to understand why and what for.

According to Nuria Rajadell Puigross, in his article the learning processes in the classroom: Teaching and Learning Strategies;A teaching strategy is equivalent to the sequenced action potentially aware of professional education, the teaching process in three dimensions of knowledge, know-how and being.

It is important to note that teaching strategies affect students in different ways such as in the contents that are transmitted to students, the intellectual work that they perform, the values ​​that are at stake in the situation of class, mode of understanding, historical, scientific, artistic, cultural, social content among others.

When applying teaching strategies is necessary to take into account some aspects or factors, which defines Frida Days Barriga as essential aspects, these are:

1. Consideration of the general characteristics of learners, such as level of cognitive development, emotional factors, prior knowledge.
2. Type domain of general knowledge and curriculum content in particular.
3. Intent or goal you wish to achieve and cognitive and educational activities to be performed by the student to get it.
4. constant monitoring of the teaching process and progress and student learning.
5. Determination of intersubjective context (eg already shared knowledge) created with students so far.

Each of these factors is an important argument to identify how and when to use certain strategy.

Learning strategies

One of the goals of the educational process both nationally and internationally, for many years, is to encourage the student / to autonomous learning, where the learner does not need an instructor constantly.

All this leads us to immediately identify tools, strategies and methods to be employed to form independent individuals and self motivated to control their own learning process, grasp the demands of the tasks and respond accordingly, plotted strategies studies for each situation and this how to value the achievements themselves correcting their mistakes.

Perhaps as a preamble, we would wonder what kind of learner is this ?, This could be defined as an apprentice who learned to learn. How do we accomplish all this in an apprentice? Using and encouraging the use of these learning strategies that fit different situations and knowledge. Now What are the learning strategies ?, What ?, How ?, apply How these classified?

Learning strategies have been defined with a variety of concepts, which coincide in different considerations and remarks such as: the fact that they are voluntary activities are procedures may be open, flexibly performed, among others.

So learning strategies define them as an apprentice procedures use or uses of conscious, controlled and intentional way flexible instrument to learn and solve problems. (Diaz Barriga, Castaneda and Lule 1986, Gaskins & Eliot, 1998).

A useful definition provided by Rebecca Oxford who considers strategies learning a language as "... specific technical actions, behaviors, steps or students (often intentionally) use to improve their progress in developing their skills . in the foreign language "and continues to pose that:

"These strategies can facilitate internalization, storage, retrieval or use of the new language. The strategies are necessary tools to develop communication skills. "(Lessard-Clouston, M 1992/1993, CTDO p. 18).

According to Weinstein and Mayer 1986, learning strategies can be defined as behaviors or thoughts that a learner uses during training with the intention of influencing the process of decoding.

For other authors as Danserau 1985, Nisbet and Schucksmith 1987, strategies are integrated sequences of procedures or activities that are chosen for the purpose of facilitating the acquisition, storage and use of information.

For Beltran Garcia - Alcaniz, Moraleda, Calleja and Santuiste (1987), the learning strategies are mental operations that are used to facilitate understanding. They will add two features that are directly or indirectly manipulated and have an intentional character or purpose.

As Beltran (et.al) have observed learning strategies as an internal process, unlike other authors who present these in a broader way in which include the influence of a process.However, all these authors agree on the fact that it is the apprentice who run these strategies, these are not carried out by the teacher or instructor.

Therefore, according to Justice and Cano (1993): strategies are actions that are based on the initiative of the student (Palmer and Goetz, 1988), consist of a sequence of activities are controlled by the learner, and are, generally, you deliberate and planned by the student (Garner, 1988).

Meanwhile Monereo (1994) considers the learning strategies as making process (conscious and intentional) decisions in which the student selects and retrieves a coordinated manner, the knowledge you need to complement a particular claim or objective, depending the characteristics of the educational situation in which the action occurs.

Well and Postigo (1993), consider the following of the most notorious features of learning strategies, say the following.

1. The application of these is not considered automatic but controlled. In this respect they need planning and execution control and related to metacognition.
2. Require selective use of own resources and capacities available, ie that for a student to put a strategy in place should have alternative resources or other more appropriate the consideration.
3. All (strategies) are composed of more simple elements, which are called "learning tactics", therefore the effective use of these strategies depends on these "tactics".(Fernandez Suarez, Ana Patricia & Antonio Valle, 1998).

It is important to note that there are characteristics that are included in most of the definitions of teaching strategies, these traits can be presented as follows: The strategies are actions that are based on the initiative of the student, they consist of a sequence of activities are controlled by the learner, and are generally deliberate and planned by the student. (Fernandez Suarez, Ana Patricia & Antonio Valle, 1998).

After seeing all these definitions we can conclude that learning strategies are the set of activities and techniques that are planned or are included in the teaching process according to the needs of students, in order to make effective the process Learning; but it is important to note that these strategies will always be used by the individual learner.

Difference between teaching strategy and learning strategy

It is good to know that there is a marked difference between them. The teaching strategy is used as a means or resource through which a teaching aid is offered, it is applied by an educator, instructor or guide in the learning process; while learning strategy internalizes a process / the student / a since they are rather behaviors that facilitate learning, and for that use a lot of resources, activities and media.

Strategies Learning a foreign language

Related research strategies learning a foreign language has its history since the sixties of the last century as a result of the progress made by cognitive psychology, the main interest to identify what good learners of a foreign language reported that they did to learn and, in some cases it resorted to observation for the learning process.

Thus we can see that in 1966 published The Method of Inference in Foreign Language Study of Aaron Carter, work was the first attempt related to the topic of strategies of learning a foreign language (Hismanoglou 2000: 1 Learning Strategies and its peculiarities in modern languages).

Later in the seventies, eighties and nineties the Latin American Journal of Education, M. & Garcia-Merás, E .: Learning strategies and their particularities in foreign languages ​​were made. In addition, these studies other specialists have made their contributions such as: Tarone (1983), O'Malley and Chamot (1990) and Rebecca Oxford (1990, 1992, 1993) (Clouston Lessard 1997).

It is good to note that these researchers define strategies learning a foreign language as "an attempt to develop linguistic and sociolinguistic competence in the target language to incorporate these within its interlingual competition.

Rubin (1987, Lessard-Clouston CTDO in 1997), the learning strategies are "strategies that contribute to the development of the system of language that the learner builds and directly affect learning." O'Malley and Chamot (1990: 1) define strategies as "thoughts or special behaviors that individuals use to help appropriate, learn or retain new information."

Similarly Rebecca Oxford has a definition which makes its contribution to this subject, according to Rebeca strategies are learning a language

". ... Specific technical actions, behaviors, steps or students (often intentionally) use to improve their progress in developing their skills in a foreign language" And keep stating that: "These strategies can facilitate internalization, storage, retrieval or use of the new language. The strategies are necessary tools to develop communication skills. "(Oxford 1990, p. 18).

According to Rubin Joan and Anna U. Chamot (1985), Learning strategies in a foreign language is considered a set of steps, routines, students use plans in order to facilitate the collection, recovery, storage and use of a foreign language. These authors consider that strategies of learning a foreign language are divided into cognitive, metacognitive and social-affective strategies.

Cognitive strategies are considered processes by which knowledge is obtained, therefore these cognitive strategies related to the process of learning a foreign language.

Within this group of strategies can be mentioned the following:

• Classification and verification: such strategies are used to confirm the understanding of the language.
• Prediction, inductive inference: The student uses his mother tongue to infer meaning therefore uses both linguistic and conceptual previous knowledge in the language.
• Deductive reasoning: in this type of strategy a student uses a general pattern to solve your problem learning, in this case makes use of analogies, synthesis.
• Practice: in this the main point is the accuracy student in the language, through trial, error, repetition, imitation.
• Memorization: In this type of strategy the main student learning is to retain the information.
• Monitoring: This occurs when the same student is able to monitor and identify the strong and weak parts in their learning.
• Contextualization: here the student seeks itself give meaning to the phrase you want to learn in sequence.
• Take note: with this strategy the student seeks to carry out a control of the main ideas or information he / she deems it necessary to learn.
• Meta cognitive strategies: allow the student to guide or regulate their own learning process. Within this group or sub-classification we can find.
• Advance organizers: occurs when done in advance a review of the material to learn.
• Directed attention: when you decide to meet certain task or material within a general content.
• Selective attention: occurs when the student decides to hold or attend specific details of certain material in order to retain a specific material.
• Self-administration: When the student determines identify learning conditions that allow them to learn.
• Self appraisal; with it seeks to identify the student using their own methods that both advances obtained in certain period of time.
• Socio-affective strategies; individual allow them to practice the language and exchange information. This can be presented in two groups.
• Cooperation; when you are working with others to get feedback.
• To clear doubts; here the student ignores some detail, but it is clear to seek specific information on specific content.

conclusion

By observing the various definitions, positions of other researchers, we can see that this struggle to identify, classify and define and implement perhaps the best teaching strategy and take students the best strategy for effective learning is not a new topic. Just enough to see the above quotes and search a little more.

Just feel the desire to see what strategies I am applying as a teacher, when? , Why ?, I apply for? and immediately that spark of knowledge that will lead us to scrutinize and see how many wonderful strategies sometimes overlooked or use a mechanically turns on.

Thus here you can see an important classification of strategies that will help us as teachers of English language to obtain further advances in the teaching-learning process, so we could see the perception of other researchers who have left a legacy to the teaching with their great contributions.

Bibliography

• Albine, ME (Oct, 2011), Article "Motivation, a key point for a more effective language learning."
• Fernandez Suarez, Ana Patricia, Learning Strategies: Basic characteristics and their relevance in the context escolar.Revista Psychodidactics 1998. ISSN 1136-1034 No. 6.. University of the Basque country. Spain
• Frida, AB & Hernandez, RG (1999). "Teaching strategies for meaningful learning". McGraw-Hill, Mexico.
• Oxford, LR (1990). "Language learning strategies. The University of Alabama, Boston, Massachusetts ".
• http://terras.edu.ar/jornadas/55/biblio/55Como-ensenamos-Las-estrategias-entre-la-teoria-y-la-practica.pdf