Characteristics and Strategies of a Good Language Learner
Characteristics of a Self-Directed Learner
- Know their needs and work productively with the teacher towards the achievement of objectives.
- Learn both inside and outside the classroom.
- Can take classroom-based material and build on it.
- Know how to use resources independently.
- Learn with active thinking.
- Adjust their learning strategies when necessary to improve learning.
- Manage and divide the time in learning properly.
- Don’t think the teacher is a God who can give them the ability to master the language.
A good language learner can take responsibility for learning: an ability to define one’s own objectives; awareness of how to use language materials effectively; careful organization of time learning, and active development of learning strategies. The key concepts that have emerged are those of learner autonomy (synonymous with self-directed learning) as a goal for learners, and learner training, or the teacher’s encouragement of their efforts towards that goal.
What Do We Know About the Strategies of the “Good Language Learner”?
Rubin Defines Learner Strategies as Including:
Any set of operations, steps, plans, routines used by the learner to facilitate the obtaining, storage, retrieval, and use of information, that is, what learners do to learn and do to regulate their learning. A simple way of distinguishing between these is to say what learners do to learn involves strategies that deal directly with the second language (cognitive strategies), and what learners do to regulate their learning involves strategies that manage learning (metacognitive strategies).
Cognitive Strategies:
Enable learners to deal with the information presented in tasks and materials by working on it in different ways. Types of Cognitive Strategies: Analogy (looking for rules in the second language on the basis of existing knowledge about language), Memorization (which can be visual or auditory), Repetition, Writing things down, Inferencing (making guesses about the form or meaning of a new language item).
Metacognitive Strategies:
Involve planning for learning, thinking about learning and how to make it effective, self-monitoring during learning, and evaluation of how successful learning has been after working on language.
Communication Strategies:
Keep learners involved in conversations through which they practice the language – e.g., gesture, mime, synonyms, paraphrases, cognate words from their first language to make themselves understood & maintain a conversation.
Socio-Affective Strategies:
Provide learners with opportunities for practice – e.g., initiating conversations with native speakers, using other people as informants about the language, collaborating on tasks, etc.
Case Study No. 1
Three groups of students, one with no strategy training, another with training on metacognitive and socio-affective strategies, and the last one with training in socio-affective strategies, had to prepare four reports in class and present them on separate occasions. They were judged on a scale of 1 to 5 against criteria of delivery (volume and pace), appropriateness (of words and phrases), accuracy (of phonology, syntax, and meaning), and organization (coherence and cohesion). The results suggested that the trained groups (2nd & 3rd groups) improved relative to the untrained one, and that both the planning strategy and the evaluation activity were influential.
Case Study No. 2
Three groups of students, one with no training, another with training in the semantic technique, and another with training on the ETR technique, were pre-tested and post-tested on their ability to answer multiple-choice comprehension questions and complete partially constructed maps of the topics of three texts, and to create their own semantic maps. The results suggested that the use of both techniques enhances the second-language reading of the students involved as compared with the group that received no training.
Semantic Mapping Technique:
Students brainstorm associations with the topic of the text they are about to read, and the teacher writes these on the board. The teacher then helps students to categorize associations into a “word net” on the board.
ETR (Experience-Text-Relationship) Method:
Consists of three stages: discussion of student experiences that relate to the topic of the text; reading the text; and drawing out of relationships between the students’ previous experiences and the content of the text. There is no visual element in this method.
The value of both activities pedagogically is that they activate prior knowledge that students possess of the topic and bring associated vocabulary into their minds so that they begin reading both knowledge and language to facilitate their comprehension.
Characteristics of a Good Learner:
Confident in his/her ability to learn, self-reliant, motivated and enthusiastic, aware of why he/she wants to learn, unafraid of making mistakes, unafraid of what he/she doesn’t know, a good risk-taker, a good guesser, positive in his/her attitude to English language and culture, a good pattern perceiver, prepared to look for opportunities to come into contact with the language, willing to assume responsibility for his/her own learning.