Teacher’s Evaluation of Learning Strategies. A study of the possibility for teachers to evaluate student’s use of language learning strategies.

Research questions  Which strategies to learn new words in English can be used in year 5, 7 and 9 in a Swedish school?  Which strategies to learn new words do their teachers acknowledge?  Is it possible for the teachers to evaluate the individual use of strategies among these pupils?

Background  Cognitive, meta cognitive and social and affective strategies  Introduced and recognized early in the learning process  Vocabulary and reading comprehension are strongly linked  Important to use target language  Teach language learning

Method  Interview in group with 5 pupils from each year  Questionnaire by mail to their teachers 1. What strategies do you practice to learn new words and to understand a text? 2. How important is reading, listening, talking? 3. How often do pupils and teachers use spoken English?  Is it possible to evaluate strategies?

Findings  A variety of strategies introduced at an early age  Some shared strategies  Reading and listening most important  Older pupils use target language  Not possible or interesting to evaluate strategies

Conclusion  Many but limited range of strategies  Important to hear and read target language  An individual process  Not possible to fully detect without close interview  Time demanding evaluation  Teach strategies but difficult to evaluate

References: Books  Leung, C English as an additional language: language and literacy development. Royston. UK: United Kingdom Reading Association  O’Malley, J.M. & Chamont, A.U Learning Strategies in Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  Oxford, R Language Learning Strategies. Heinle & Heinle Publisher, Boston, USA.

Articles:  Börjesson, L Strategier i engelska och moderna språk. Institutionen för pedagogik och specialpedagogik, Göteborgs universitet enu/article/attachment/Strategier%20i%20engelsk a%20och%20moderna%20spr%C3%A5k.pdf ( ) enu/article/attachment/Strategier%20i%20engelsk a%20och%20moderna%20spr%C3%A5k.pdf  Oxford, R Language learning strategies: An update. ( )