1.0 Types of Language Learning Strategies

The development in language teaching has undergone a great change trough the years.

Most language teaching primary concern is about what is the learner learns with their second

language teaching lesson. Rubin (1975), classified that strategies that been implemented in the

learning process will affect directly or indirectly to the learner’s language learning. According

to Rubin, there are varies of language learning strategies and they are; learning strategies,

communication strategies and also social strategies. In the learning strategies, they are two

main types that contribute to the learners’ development and also the learners’ language

system. They are the cognitive learning strategies and also met cognitive learning strategies

aspects. Steps or the methods used in the learning process or the problem solving technique

that require the learners to do direct analysis, transformation or even synthesis of the materials

used in the lesson. Therefore, there are six main cognitive that been listed by Rubin that

contributes directly to the language teaching. The main cognitive are; clarification, guessing,

deductive, practice, memorization and also monitoring.

Meanwhile in met cognitive learning strategies, the techniques used in this method are

by overseen, regulate or self direct language learning. This method involved planning,

prioritizing, setting goals and also self-management by the learners. The learners are involved

not so actively in the communication strategies. This strategy is used by the learners when

they faced the difficulty in their communication and mainly the problem come from their

communication outrun and they misunderstood by co-speaker. The social strategy requires the

learners to engage themselves in the learning activities that been carried out by the teacher.

This would provide them an opportunity to practice the target language through the exposure

given in this method (Rubin and Wenden, 1987).

Oxford (1990), also has his own classification language learning strategies and they

include two main classes; direct and also indirect and then next been divided into six more

classes. Oxford believes that language learning could be measured by the level of the

speaker’s competence. In this method, the met cognitive element would help the learners to

regulate their learning session. In contrary, the cognitive strategy is the mental strategies used

by the learners and they used this element to make sense of their learning, memory strategies

in storing the information and also the compensation.

Oxford also lined out the learning strategies into direct strategies that involving

memory; creating mental linkages, applying images and sounds, reviewing well, and also

employing action, then cognitive elements that includes practicing, receiving and sending

messages strategies and lastly the compensation strategies; guessing intelligently and

overcoming limitation. In the indirect strategies, they are three aspects need to be considered.

They are as follows; met cognitive strategies, affective strategies, and also social strategies.

According to O’Malley (1985), there are three main subcategories of language

learning strategies. The main subcategories are; metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies

and also socioaffective strategies. O’Malley (1985) stated that in the metacognitive strategies,

the learners will express their executive function and in this strategy, the learners and also the

teachers need to plan and also think about the learning process as it is taking place. The

teacher also needs to monitor the learners’ production and also their comprehension.

Evaluating their learning activity is also needed and it is also possible to include advance

organizers, directed attention, selective attention, self-management, functional planning, self-

monitoring, delayed production and self-evaluation.

Meanwhile in other two main subcategory, the cognitive strategies are more about the

limited specific learning task to the learners and they will involve more direct manipulation of

the learning materials itself. The teacher can use repetition, resourcing, translation, grouping,

note taking, deduction, recombination, imagery, auditory representation, key word,

contextualization, elaboration, transfer and also differencing. The last subcategories by

O’Malley are socioaffective strategies. This socioaffective describe about the learners are

related to the socio activity and transacting with other learners during the lesson. The main

socioaffective elements are cooperation and clarification.

The last language learning strategy is introduced by Stern in 1992, and according to

Stern, the strategies in his language teaching involving the learners’ intention and this will

direct his own learning session. He believes that the learners can take charge of his or her

development by doing his or her own programmed with the help from the teacher. Stren

believes that by involving the teacher, the teacher would act as an adviser and also an

resourceful person to the learners. Therefore, on this learning strategy, the learners must

decide by him or her on the commitment in learning the target language. He or she must set

the reasonable goals and decides on the appropriate method, select the best resources and also

monitor the language learning process. The learners also need to evaluate his or her

achievement based on the goals and also the expectation that been set before the learning

process took place.

In the Stern’s cognitive strategies, there are numbers of steps used in the learning or

problem solving that requires the learners to do direct analysis, transformation or even

synthesis of the learning materials used. Stern also mentioned that in this cognitive method,

there are clarification, guessing, deductive reasoning, practice, memorization, and also

monitoring. Meanwhile in the communicative strategies or also known as communicative-

experiential strategies, refer to the techniques used by the learners to keep conversation going.

Among the steps that learners could do in sustaining a conversation are circumlocution,

gesturing, paraphrase, are even asking repetition and explanation from the co-speaker. The

idea of this strategy is to avoid interrupting the flow of the communication among the

speakers.

Next, the interpersonal strategy that involves the monitoring technique and the

learners need to monitor their development along evaluating their performance. The learners

should contact or make a try to communicate with the native speaker. They should make an

effort to cooperate with the native speaker in learning the targeted language. Stern believes

that trough this technique, the learners must become acquainted with the target culture and it

is not just learning the targeted language itself.

The last subcategory in Stern’s language teaching methodology is affective strategy.

This strategy the learners are divided into good and bad language learners. The good language

learners will learn and try to create associations of positive affect towards the foreign

language and they will make an effort to join the activity that involving the targeted language.

By learning training used by the teachers, the learners will have the opportunity to help the

students to face up the emotional difficulties because sometimes the learners tend to have the

negative feeling and commonly they would feel less conscious towards the foreign language.

Thus, by language teaching strategy, the learners will learn to overcome the negative feeling

and draw the frustration to the potential frustration to a good element for them to learn the

targeted language.

2.0 Importance of Language Learning

Language learning strategies are important for the learners to learn their second

language. It is believed that language learning can be used as a good indicator of how the

learners approach the task or the problems that they encountered during the process of the

language learning. This language learning also give the advantages to the teachers by giving

the valuable clues about their students performances and also how their students could access

the situation, the plan, and than select the appropriate skills in order to understand, learn,

remembered the new input based on what had been presented in the classroom. The language

learning also will give the opportunity to the learners to use the wide range of language

learning strategies wisely in improving their second language mastery (Fedderholdt, 1997).

The metacognitive strategies are believed in helping the learning time, self-

monitoring, and also self-evaluation for the learners. Meanwhile, in the cognitive strategies,

the learners could use the previous knowledge that they have in solving the new problems that

occurred. Socioaffective language strategies which include the native speaker in the learning

process will assist the learners to improve more on their pronunciation and also solving the

language based problem. These three main subcategories will help the learners to be more

independence and not to rely much on the teacher and also will give the learners the

autonomy in learning the language. With this, the learners could take control of their learning

process. Lessard (1997) stated that language learning strategies will help the students to

develop the students’ competence. Oxford (1990) also believes that language learning can

become a useful tools for the learners to be more active, self-directed and these elements are

important in building the students’ communicative competence.

The teachers who train the students by using the language teaching strategies will also

help their students to be a good language learner and they could be considered as a good

teacher to their students. Research also shown that by using language learning strategies, bad

language learners will try to be more successful and eventually they will be a good language

learners through the strategies used.

3.0 Role of the Teacher

The teacher plays a big role in ensuring the language learning strategies become a

success. Therefore, before a teacher uses the strategies into his or her classroom, the teacher

need to learn about their students first. The teacher needs to recognize the students’ interests,

motivations, and also the learning styles. The teacher can also learn the language strategies

that the students already know from their background knowledge in learning the targeted

language. This can be achieved through the observation from the teacher to students. Seek

that either the students able to ask clarification, verification, or even correction while the

teaching lesson is done in the classroom. The teacher also could observe then behavior of the

students in cooperating with their peers or even some one outside from the class. Besides that,

the teacher could also prepare a set of questions so that the students would be able to describe

themselves and also their language learning experience.

The teacher needs to have a good knowledge about his or her students. The teacher

needs to find the students’ goals, motivations, language learning strategies, and also their

understanding to the course. The students may have different learning styles and varied

awareness even though they are in the same class. Thus the teacher could not only focus only

on one group or even use the same method for each student as their needs are different from

each person. Hence, the language teacher need to prepare him or her with a number of

language teaching strategies that would cater with the students’ need. Therefore, it is

important for the teacher to equip themselves with varied language styles (Hall, 1997).

Besides that, the language teacher should also analyze the materials used in the

classroom especially the textbook. He or she need to see whether the textbook would includes

the language learning strategies training. It is best for the teacher to find a new texts or even

new teaching materials if there is no presence of the language teaching strategies in the

teaching tools. Besides that, the language teacher should also study his own teaching method

and also the overall classroom style. By analyzing the lesson plan, the teacher could

determine whether the lesson plan will give the learners the chance to use variety of language

learning strategies or not. The language teaching strategies could be either implicit or explicit

or both and by evaluating the lesson plan, the teacher could cater the best need for the learners

to learn the targeted language with the best language teaching strategies.