1. Styles and Strategies
Chapter 5

2. Terminological Distinctions
Process
Style
Strategy

3. Process The most general of the three concepts.
It is characteristic of every human being.
It is a global account of how people learn.

4. Style
It refers to consistent and enduring tendencies or preferences within an individual.
Styles are those general characteristics of intellectual functioning and personality type that pertain to you as an individual.
Styles vary inter-individually: from one individual to another.

5. Strategies
Strategies are specific methods of approaching a problem or task.
They are ways of achieving a particular end, or solving a particular problem.
Each one of us has a host of possible strategies, which vary from moment to moment, from one situation to another.
Strategies vary intra-individually.

6. Learning Styles Definition:
Learning styles are cognitive, affective, and physiological traits that are relatively stable indicators of how learners perceive, interact with, and respond to the learning situation.
Explanation: Your individual ways of learning which are relatively stable (i.e. do not change much), and which reflect your own personal cognitive, affective, and physical characteristics.

7. Examples of Learning styles
Field Independence
Field Dependence
Your ability to perceive a particular item in a “field” of distracting items.
The tendency to depend on the total field, to the extent that you do not perceive the embedded parts.
The total field is perceived as a unified whole.

10. Field Independence
Field dependence
Advantage:
It enables a person to distinguish parts from a whole, to concentrate on details.
Disadvantage:
A person sees only the parts, fails to see the whole picture.
Advantage:
It enables a person to perceive (get) the whole picture of a problem, an idea, or an event.
Disadvantage:
A person may get distracted easily, and may not be able to see details or variables.

11. Field Independence/Dependence and 2nd language Learning
Field Dependence
Closely related to classroom learning which involves analysis, attention to details, exercises.
Prefer deductive types of learning
More successful in learning in natural settings.
Tend to prefer inductive learning.

12. Conclusion Both styles are important.
Brown maintains that F. independence/ dependence do NOT need to be in complementary distribution.
It is the burden of the teacher to understand the preferred style of each learner to find the appropriate way of presenting the material.
There is also a burden on the learner to invoke the appropriate style for the context.