An alternative approach to strategy instruction: the role of learners' goals and mediation in the development of strategic language learning

Abstract

The issue of teaching language learning strategies to EFL/ESL learners has been controversial over the past few decades. Whereas empirical studies make pedagogical recommendations and support the idea of directly training students in the use of strategies, overall findings reveal only partial success after strategy teaching or training. Besides, mainstream language learning strategies and strategy instruction research has been underpinned by cognitive theory, leaving aside the social and cultural aspects of learning. In a turn to sociocultural theory, it has been argued that strategies are related to both individual cognitive processes and the mediation of the practices in which learning takes place (Donato & McCormick, 1994; Gao, 2006; Parks & Raymond, 2004). Likewise, learners’ language goals seem to have a significant role in how strategic learning progressively develops (Gillette, 1994; Da Silva, 2008).Grounded on sociocultural theory, this study investigates how strategic learning develops without direct teaching of strategies, but from the mediation of learners’ goals and their reflection on classroom activity. In seeking for methodological appropriateness, the present study has combined qualitative research procedures with alternative methods from those utilized intervention studies. This was achieved by the implementation of a goal-oriented portfolio project and a learning journal into a language classroom of a TEFL program at a public university in Mexico. Portfolios and learning journals had a twofold purpose: mediate students’ learning and collect data. Eighteen undergraduate students learning English as a foreign language participated in the study. Data gathered from students’ written reflections over a fourteen-week period provided with evidence on how mediated and goal-oriented activity facilitates students’ strategic learning. Findings suggest that learners can take a more strategic approach to language learning if classroom practices are intentionally changed to this purpose. Moreover, they indicate that the notion of development is essential to the understanding of how learners use strategies. The study itself aims to help language teachers identify application for their own classrooms and to inform future research works framed within the framework of sociocultural theory.

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