Page 151 - Beyond Methods

Promoting learner autonomy 139 should be directed to specific language learning problems related
the learners’ experience.
• Interactive. Learners should not be merely told what to do and when to do it and then left on their own to practice. Rather, until they evidence some ability to regulate their use of the strategy, teachers are expected to continue to work with them.
• Diagnostic.Thecontentofthetrainingshouldbebasedontheac- tual proficiency of the learners. Therefore, at the outset of any strategy training, information on which strategies students use and how well they use them should be collected.
Reflective task 6.3
If you wish to implement some of the learner training guidelines given above, what possibilities and limitations do you anticipate in your specific learning/ teaching context? Focus, among other factors, on the attitudes of adminis- trators, colleagues, and students.
What Learners Can Do
The wealth of information now available on learning strategies and learner training opens up opportunities for learners to monitor their learning process and maximize their learning potential. With the help of their teachers and their peers, learners can exploit some of these opportunities by:
• identifying their learning strategies and styles to know their strengths and weaknesses as language learners. Learners can achieve this, for example, by administering, or being adminis- tered, select portions of strategy inventories and style surveys and writing their own language learning histories;
• stretching their strategies and styles by incorporating some of those employed by successful language learners. For example, if some learners are “global” in their learning style, they might have to develop strategies that are associated with the analytic learn- ing style, such as breaking down words and sentences in order to find meaning;
• evaluating their language performance to see how well they have achieved their learning objective(s). This can be achieved by mon-