Notas y mapas

Wenden, A. L. (1986)  “What do second-language learners know about their language learning? A second look at retrospective accounts”. (Journal article)

Addressed to researchers and classroom teachers, this paper is a report of the analysed research data referred in the previous article. But the population included in this study is smaller. Twenty-five college students of ESL at Columbia University were interviewed after being given few days and some questions to reflect on their learning practice. Emphasized themes were the social settings in which they use L2 and the strategies to express themselves, to understand what is said, and to think in the second language. The objective of the study was to “classify learners’ statable knowledge about their language learning” (p.187). It intended to show the aspects of language learning, other than strategies, the students could talk about, and the relation of this knowledge with the use of strategies.

The statements of the students were classified into five categories:

1. Designating: for statements about language: grammar, phonology, vocabulary, rules of discourse and the function of language (p.188).
2. Diagnosing: for statements about students’ proficiency in the language, performance in certain tasks or comments on their progress (p.189).
3. Evaluating: for evaluative statements on the outcome of using a strategy (p.189).
4. Self-analysing: for statements considering the reactions to a particular learning activity: feelings, views about its usefulness or views about students’ own language aptitude, learning style, personality, age, and social role (p.190).
5. Theorizing: for statements in which students express their beliefs about how best to learn a language. Wenden offers a further classification of the principles behind explicit beliefs and the aspects in implicit beliefs (p.190).

As for the “insights” these statements provided on the use of strategies, Wenden affirms that students reported the use of strategies

1. to deal with unfamiliar items of language: unknown words, unexpected sounds, inexplicable colloquial expressions (p.191),
2. when experiencing a gap between communication need and linguistic repertoire (p.191),
3. as a way to cope with inhibiting feelings such as fear, embarrassment and uncertainty (p.192), and
4. after setting their own language learning priorities (p.194).

Wenden also identifies the criteria used by students to evaluate a strategy as effective or ineffective, and observes that the unsuccessful attempts to use the language trigger a change in strategies (p.195). This last finding is vital to teachers, as the author suggests that their role in classroom should be more than just transmitting effective strategies. They should also foster the students’ awareness of their beliefs about their learning, and lead them to reflect on these beliefs so they can use a variety of strategies and benefit from the ones that help them best to meet their learning goals.

Wenden, A. (1986 )  “Helping language learners think about learning”. (Journal article).

Based on the analysis of semi-structured interviews of thirty-four ESL students about their beliefs on how to learn a second language, this article proposes an orientation program to be developed in postsecondary language courses.

Anita Wenden quotes statements from the interviews to show the influence of specific beliefs about how best to learn a language on the students’ self-directed learning. Some students place the success in learning a new language on the study of grammar, others on personal aptitudes, and others on being exposed to the language and being challenged to use it. These beliefs determine their preferred methods of study.

Given this relation between beliefs and approach, Wenden’s program urges teachers to discover their students’ beliefs about language learning, to give their students the opportunities to think about learning, and guide them through alternative views on how to learn a language.

The orientation program consists of 8 modules, each one containing objectives, resources, procedures and a discussion on its potential educational value. Here are the objectives of each module:

1. Students consider the origin and function of beliefs. They examine their beliefs about succeeding in college (p.4).
2. Students discuss their beliefs about learning (p.5).
3. Students compare language learning with other kinds of learning (p5).
4. Students examine the beliefs of other language learners. They relate beliefs to approach (p.6).
5. Students will consider the importance of personal factors in language learning (p.6).
6. Students determine what their beliefs are (p.7).
7. Students analyse the beliefs of successful language learners. They note that good language learners are guided by more than one belief. They note the relationship between beliefs and approach. (p.7)
8. Students compare their approach with the approach of the good language learner. They determine whether or how they will modify their approach (p.8).

The assumptions of this program are that effective learning needs the acceptance of new approaches to learning, and that taking the beliefs and experiences of the students into account will help them to accept new approaches to learning. Thinking about their beliefs and explaining the significance and potential effectiveness of learning strategies can help students to develop metacognitive skills, or clarify and label what they do and know, and “allow them to assume more control over their learning” (p.10).  This article supposes the role of the language teacher as responsible for forming autonomous language learners.

 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.