Ellis, R. (1986) “Learner strategies”. (Chapter from a book)
Rod Ellis identifies two types of L2 knowledge: declarative, consisting of internalized L2 rules and chunks of language, and procedural, consisting of the learner’s strategies and procedures to process L2 data for acquisition and for use (p.164).
In this theoretical article, the author attempts to “review the various psychological explanations of (L2) acquisition and use in order to provide an account of the learner’s procedural knowledge” (p.189). He divides this procedural knowledge into two types of processes and strategies, social and cognitive. The latter type is split into cognitive processes for learning L2 and cognitive processes for using L2. In Ellis’s typology the use of L2 entails a further distinction between production / reception processes and strategies, and communication strategies (p.165).
In organizing the learning strategies, Ellis brings into play a distinction between two kinds of speech. Formulaic speech refers to the unanalysable chunks of language that the learner memorize to use L2 (p.167). Creative speech designates the “novel sentences” the learner produces as a result of applying L2 rules (p.170). The learning strategies associated to formulaic speech are the psycholinguistic strategy of pattern memorization (unconsciously activated), and the behavioral strategy of pattern imitation (consciously activated) (p.168). What would make possible the passage from formulaic to creative speech is pattern analysis, the comparison of formulas and search for differences and similarities (p.170).
On the other side, the processes accountable for the creative rule system (interlanguage) are hypothesis formation, hypothesis testing and automatization. Each of them implies a set of strategies. The learner uses simplification strategies such as overgeneralization or transfer to formulate simple hypotheses that help her ease communication. Also she can use intralingual inferencing to form hypotheses by attending to input or intralingual and extralingual inferencing when using external L2 data or non-linguistic clues (pp.172-73). The learner can test the hypotheses she has developed receptively, productively, metalingually or interactionally (p.174). Finally, consolidated hypotheses are expressed through formal and functional practice (p.175).
In order to present the strategies to use L2, Ellis adapts from Clark and Clark (1977) a model of L2 production consisting of three processes: planning program, articulatory program, and motor program (p.177). Production requires semantic simplification and linguistic simplification strategies for planning utterances, and monitoring for correcting them (p.180).
The last and more complex group of strategies for L2 production is the one that the learner uses to maintain communication. Here Ellis offers a detailed typology of communication strategies divided into two big types: A. Reduction strategies, which are used by the learner when he gives up part of his original communication goal. Ellis distinguishes between formal and functional reduction strategies (p.184). B. Achievement strategies, which are those used by the leaner to compensate any difficulty when he has decided to keep his communicative goal. These are classified in: 1. Non-cooperative strategies, in which the learner does not call the assistance of the interlocutor, such as: code switching, foreignizing, literal translation, substitution, paraphrase, word coinage, and restructuring. 2. Retrieval strategies, such as: waiting, using semantic field or using another languages, in which no compensatory strategies are used (p.185).
Ellis acknowledges that this classification of the learner strategies into learning, production and communication strategies might be porous. But the contribution of this typology is the systemic organization of a vast number of strategies that have been studied in psycholinguistics and SLA research in the 1980’s.
