Language Learning Styles and Strategies

Lecture 6

Objectives

by the end of this lecture you will be able to:•Distinguish between learning styles and strategies.•List the main four domains of learning styles and give an example for each domain.•List the main six categories of learning strategies and give an example for each category.•Recognize the implications of these learning styles and strategies on L2 teaching.

•What is a learning style?

•What are the four domains of learning styles?

Refer to p. 359

•What is a learning strategy?

•Learning strategies can be classified in six main categories. What are they?

•Refer to p. 359

•Why is it important to have harmony between the students’ learning styles and strategies with the teacher’s instructional methodology?

•Refer to p. 359

Learning Styles

What are the Learning Styles ?

→The general approaches to learning

How many Learning Styles are there?

→Four main dimension and many among each

Learning Styles

Sensory Preferences

Personality Types

Desired Degree of Generality

Biological Differences

Sensory Preferences

•What are the four sensory preferences?

•What does sensory preference means?

•Can people vary with their sensory preferences based on their cultural background?

Refer to p. 360

Sensory Preferences

Visual

Auditory

Kinesthetic

Tactile

Visual Preference

• Visual students like to read and obtain a great deal from visual stimulation.

• Stimulations such as words, images, motion pictures and live performances

• Conversation and oral instruction

→might be confusing to them

Auditory Preference

• Comfortable without visual input

• Excited by the classroom interactions in role plays and similar activities.

• However!!!

→They sometimes have difficulty with writing

Kinesthetic and Tactile Preference

• Kinesthetic Tactile 　　

• Like lots of movement and enjoy working with tangible objects, collages and flashcards.

• Instead of sitting still, they prefer walking around the classroom

Q&A

• What sensory preference do you prefer?

Personality Types

Extroverted vs. Introverted

Intuitive-Random

vs.

Sensing-Sequential

Thinking vs. Feeling

Closure-oriented/Judging

vs.

Open/Perceiving

Extroverted vs. Introverted

• Extroverted

→energy from external world.

→enjoy interacting with people and making friends

• Introverted

→energy from internal world

→seeking solitude

• What should a teacher do with these two personalities? (refer to p. 360)

Intuitive-Random vs. Sensing-Sequential

• Intuitive-Random → Think in abstract, futuristic, large-scale, and

nonsequential ways → Like to creat theories and prefer to guide their own

learning

• Sensing-Sequential → Like facts rather than theories → Want guidance and specific instruction from

teachers• What should a teacher do with these two

personalities? (refer to p. 360)

How do teachers teach them both?

• To offer variety and choice

• Sometimes a highly organized structure for sensing-sequential learners

• At other times multiple options and enrichment activities for another kind

Thinking vs. Feeling

• Thinking

→ Oriented toward the stark truth

→ Want to be viewed competent and do not give praise easily

• Feeling → Value other people in personal ways

→ Show empathy and compassion

• What should a teacher do with these two personalities?

Closure-oriented/Judging vs.Open/Perceiving

• Closure-oriented/Judging → Reach judgments or completion quickly

→ Enjoy being given specific tasks and deadlines

→ Desire for closure

• Open/Perceiving

→ Take learning less seriously, treating it like a game

→Dislike deadlines and like to have a long time soaking up information by osmosis.

• They both provide good balance to each other

Q&A

• What personality type do you think you are?

Desired Degree of Generality

Global or holistic

Analytic

Desired Degree of Generality

• Global or holistic → Like socially interaction, communicating events

→ Feel free to guess from context

→ Tend to make grammatical mistakes

• Analytic → Concentrate on grammatical details

→ Do not take risks guessing from contexts

• What should a teacher do with these two personalities?

Biological Differences

Biorhythms

Sustenance

Location

Biorhythms

• Learners have their best time for studying

• Some perform well in the morning; some in the evening…

Sustenance

• The need for food and drink while learning.

• Quite a number of L2 learners feel very comfortable learning with a candy bar, a cup of coffee or a soda in hand while some tend to be distracted from studying

Location

• Involves the nature of environment

• Temperature

• Lighting

• Sound

• And even the firmness of the chairs

Learning Strategies

• What are learning strategies?

→ Specific behaviors or thought processes that learners use to enhance their learning

• How many learning strategies are there? → Six main categories

About strategies

• A strategy is neither good nor bad

• A strategy is useful if → a. It relates well to the L2 task at hand → b. It fits the particular student’s learning style → c. The student employs it effectively

• Enable students to become more independent, autonomous, lifelong learners.

• What should teachers do with these strategies?

Six Main Categories

Cognitive Strategies

Metacognitive Strategies

Memory-related Strategies

Compensatory Strategies

Affective Strategies

Social Strategies

Cognitive Strategies

• Enable learners to manipulate the language materials

• E.g., through reasoning, analysis, notetaking, summarizing, outlining, reorganizing, etc.

Metacognitive Strategies

• Identifying one’s own learning style preferences and needs

• Manage the learning process overall.

• Give examples. P.364

Memory-related Strategies

• Help learners to link one L2 item or concept to another, but do not always involve deep understanding

• Enable learners to learn and retrieve information in an orderly string

• Learners need such strategy much less when they become better

• Give examples p. 364

Compensatory Strategies

• Guessing from context in listening and reading

• Use synonyms and “talk around” the missing word to aid speaking and writing

• Use gestures or pause words

• Help learners to make up missing words

Affective Strategies

• Identify one’s mood and anxiety level

• Use deep breathing or positive self-talk

• Students who progress toward proficiency seldom need it

Social Strategies

• Work with others and understand the target culture as well as the language

• Intensive interaction with people

• Give examples p. 365

• what are the implications of learning styles and strategies for L2 teaching?

•Refer to p. 365

Literature as Content For ESL/EFL

Lecture 7

objectives

List the benefits of using literature as content. The importance of literature to extent learners’

awareness of their own communication. List the six aspects of language development in

literature. Compare between efferent and esthetic reading. List the advantages of stylistics Use characterization and point of view in

language development. Use literary texts in integrating the four

language skills.

The three benefits of using literature as content

1. Show the importance of form in

communication. (how the language is

used)

2. Good resource for integrating the 4

skills.

3. Raises cross-cultural awareness.

Defining literary texts

Language is used to convey a message by relating information.

Literature convey “an individual awareness of reality” What makes literary texts unique is that the WHAT

and HOW of the text communication are inseparable.

This makes literature valuable for extending learners’ awareness that how they say something is important in two ways.

What are those two ways? (refer to p. 319) Example p. 319-320

Defining literary texts. Cont.

1. How something is said often contributes to speakers’

achieving their purpose in communication.

2. Deciding how something is said, speakers often

communicate something about themselves.

The writer have the choice of what to say and what not to say.

The writer make grammatical and lexical choices to define spatial and temporal frames.

Kramsch’ example. (1993)

Defining Literary Text. Cont.

The particularity of literary text rests on the author’s use of six aspects of text development. What are these six aspects? (refer to

p. 320).

These dimensions of literary texts that contribute to the “what/ how of literary communication.”

Examples

Novels Stories Advertisements Newspapers headlines Jokes Pun

Literary Text And The Reader

Rosenblatt(1978) defines literary texts

in terms of how readers interact with

them.

Interaction can be:Efferent reading (the focus is on the

message)Aesthetic reading (is for entertainment(Efferent vs. Aesthetic ReadingDefine the two terms. Refer to p. 320

Stylistics and its advantages

Stylistics: literary text analysis. Advantages:

A key to decode the text Basing the interpretation of systematic verbal

Analysis reaffirms the centrality of the language as the aesthetic medium of literature.

Easy for non-native speakers since they already have the systematic knowledge of the language.

other researchers say the focus on stylistics will prevent the reader from enjoying the text.

What do you think? Refer to p.321 to define practical stylistics.

Using Literary Texts to Develop Language Pick a partner and choose one of the

stories mentioned in p. 321-322

What things did you like about the story? What things did you not like about the

story? If you wanted to give your students a story

to read, what characteristics should it carry to achieve language development?

Characteristics of a chosen literary text

Students will enjoy reading literature

only if the text is accessible to them.

The teacher should make sure that:

the theme of the text is engaging

The linguistic and conceptual level are

appropriate for the students.

Literary texts in language development

teachers can help students develop their language through literary texts by means of using: Characterization Point of view

Characterization

Readers assess characters in a story based on what the character says and does.

How to assess:Listing the adjectives they believe best describe each character.

return to the text to justify their interpretations

Examine the language of the text.

Point of viewPoint of view

Three types of point of view: Refer to p. 323 and define the three types of point of view.

1. Spatio-temporal point of view (tenses & order of events)2. Ideological point of view ( set of values, or belief system, communicated

by the language of the text) 1. Critical literacy/ Critical reading (Critical literacy encourages

readers to actively analyze texts and offers strategies for decoding the messages)

2. Critical readers thus recognize not only what a text says, but also how that text portrays the subject matter.  They recognize the various ways in which each and every text is the unique creation of a unique author.

Point of view cont.

3. Psychological point of view:1. Internal (the story is told from 1st person point of

view by a character who shares his feeling or told by someone who know the feelings of the characters)

2. External ( the narrator describes the events and the characters from a position outside of the main character with no access to their feelings)

Using literary texts to integrate skills

How to integrate the 4 skills? Reading refer to p. 326

Listening refer to p. 326

Speaking refer to p. 327

Writing refer to p. 328

Using literary texts to develop cultural awareness. Four dimensions of culture:

1. The aesthetic sense. (in which the language is associated with the literature, film,

and music of particular country)2. The sociological sense (in which the language is linked to the costumes of a country)3. The semantic sense (in which a culture’s conceptual system is embodied in the

language)4. pragmatic sense (in which the cultural norms influence what language is

appropriate for what context)Refer to p. 328 to look up the meaning of these four

dimensions

How to use a literary text to raise cultural awareness?

Choosing different texts from different cultures provides a medium for sharing and illuminating the differences and similarities of two cultures.