3.2.2.4.The Good Learner

Early research on learner training (especially in the USA) tried to analyse what "successful" language learners do when they learn a language so that the results could be extrapolated to and implemented in learner-training programmes (Rubin & Thompson 1982). Rubin (1975) identified seven main strategies which characterise the good language learner. He/she:

1.  is a willing and accurate guesser;
2. has a strong drive to communicate, or to learn from communication;
3. is often not inhibited (he/she is willing to appear foolish if reasonable communication results);
4. is constantly looking for patterns in the language;
5. practises;
6. monitors his/her own speech and speech of others;
7. attends to meaning where he/she realises that in order to understand the message, it is not sufficient to pay attention to the grammar of the language or to the surface form of speech. (cited in Hashin & Sahil 1994:3, and in Tudor 1996:38).

Naiman, Frohlich & Todesco (1978) identify six strategies used by good language learners:

1. Selecting language situations that allow one's (learning) preferences to be used;
2. Actively involving oneself in language learning;
3. Seeing language as both a rule system and a communication tool;
4. Extending and revising one's understanding of the language;
5. Learning to think in the language;
6. Addressing the affective demands of language learning. (Adapted from Naiman, Frohlich & Todesco 1978)

However, as Tudor points out (1996:39) such characteristics and strategies cannot be simply 'pedagogised' and used to enable all learners to become successful. Besides the ambiguity of the term 'successful learner'[9] and the logical fallacy that imitating the result of actions will reproduce the cause of those actions ("A implies B, therefore B implies A"), these characteristics must be seen as growing out of and indicating a general active, inquiring and attentive approach to learning, "which can only be acquired integratively" (Tudor 1996:39). Rubin acknowledges that other factors influence what constitutes an effective set of learning strategies (task, learning stage, age, context, individual styles, cultural differences) but does not take account of affective and metacognitive factors (sections 3.2.2.5, 3.2.2.6), which have since been shown to have significant effects on learner training. Gremmo (1995:158) observes that successful learners seem to do everything, and that "we need to set up types of learning, not types of learners. In this light, the aim of learner-training should be to help learners to come to terms with their strengths and weaknesses, and to find the strategies that suit them best, rather than trying to make everyone a 'successful learner'. 

3.2.2.5. Metacognition

A metacognitive approach to teaching sees education as involving the development of 'whole' persons as self-directed agents and autonomous learners (Quicke 1994), but Wenden (1995:183) observes that learner training has typically focused on the strategies for self-directed learning (planning, monitoring and evaluating), or on cognitive strategies, with little attention to knowledge about cognition, specifically 'task knowledge'. In fact metacognition ("the process that underlies the efficient use of strategies and the essence of intelligent activity" [Wenden 1987c:573]) is an essential part of learner training, involving a conscious knowledge about learning, along with an ability to employ cognitive strategies intelligently (Williams & Burden 1997:154; Quicke 1994:249):

Effective learners need to be able to employ strategies unconsciously, and then to be able to call their metacognitive awareness into play as and when necessary when faced with a difficulty. (Williams & Burden, 1997:155)

Wenden (1978c:574) proposes three types of metacognitive knowledge: knowledge about person; abou t task; and about strategy, and Nisbet & Shucksmith (1988) identify the first of these (self-knowledge) as the most important knowledge, and learning to learn as the most important learning:

Understanding the strategies of learning and gaining self-knowledge, in the form of awareness of the processes we use in learning, helps us to control those processes and gives us the opportunity to take responsibility for our own learning. (1988:vii).

According to these authors, such learning depends on developing a 'seventh sense', an awareness of one's mental processes, and "cultivating this seventh sense should be one of the prime aims of the curriculum." Wenden (1991b:35) also suggests four ways of characterising metacognitive knowledge (adapted from Brown et al. 1983; and Flavell 1979):

1. Stable: The facts that learners acquire about their language learning processes, through experience and informal learning contexts, are a permanent part of their store of knowledge in the long-term memory.
2. Statable: Learners can talk about these beliefs. They are available to awareness (cf. Flavell 1979:907-8).
3. Fallible: What language learners know about their language process is not always correct. Some of it may come from 'folk wisdom' from friends and family, from teachers, or from experience. It may seem to make good sense, but is not always empirically supportable.
4. Interactive: Metacognitive knowledge can be used to analyse a learning task or goal; it can influence one's choice of strategies; it can be used to evaluate whatever transient awareness of learning that can occur in the course of a learning task, and be changed by this insight (Wenden 1991b:35).

Williams & Burden include affective aspects of learning in metacognition, specifying that training in metacognitive awareness must include awareness of what learning a language involves as well as training in the selection of appropriate strategies for different situations. Thus metacognitive training "should include heightening awareness of the feelings involved in different aspects of language learning, and of individuals' own personalities and strengths and how these could best be employed in language learning" (1997:156).

3.2.2.6. Affective Factors
The importance of affect in influencing language learning is addressed in section 3.3, but is introduced here in relation to its effect on learning strategies. Gardner & MacIntyre (1991) suggest that the use of certain affective learning strategies reduces the level of language anxiety, thus freeing up cognitive resources to be applied to the use of cognitive strategies , and that "affective variables are probably more powerful in influencing strategy use than intelligence and aptitude" (Gardner & MacIntyre 1992). They also conclude that learning strategies interact in a complicated way with characteristics of the language learner and situational variables, to influence proficiency in a second language (Gardner & MacIntyre 1993b). Williams & Burden (1997:154) and others identify these affective variables as attitude, motivation, age, personality, gender, general learning style, national origin, aptitude, proficiency in the language, and perceived proficiency (cf. Oxford 1989; Oxford & Nyikos 1989; Rost & Ross 1991; Gardner & MacIntyre 1992), and Oxford and Nyikos (1989) conclude that increased motivation and self-esteem lead to more effective use of appropriate strategies and vice versa. Weinstein & Mayer (1986) state that learning strategies are intentional on the part of the learner, and that the teaching goal is to "affect the learner's motivational or affective state, or the way in which the learner selects, acquires, organises, or integrates new knowledge." (1986:315).

3.2.2.7. Conclusions

Oxford & Nyikos (1989:291) observe that researchers have identified a number of factors related to choice of language learning strategies. These include: i) the language being learned; ii) the level of language learning, proficiency, or the course; iii) the degree of metacognitive awareness; iv) gender; v) affective variables such as attitudes, motivation, and language learning goals; vi) specific personality traits; vii) overall personality type; viii) learning style; ix) career orientation or field of specialization; x) national origin; xi) aptitude; xii) language teaching methods; xiii) task requirements; and xiv) type of strategy training. These results have shown that effective second and foreign language learners use a variety of appropriate metacognitive, cognitive, and social-affective strategies for both receptive and productive tasks, while less effective students not only use strategies less frequently, but have a smaller repertoire of strategies and often do not choose appropriate strategies for the task (Chamot & Kupper 1989:13).

A number of benefits are claimed to result from learner training:

1. "Strategy training can ... be used to help learners achieve learner autonomy as well as linguistic autonomy" (Weaver & Cohen, 1998:70).
2. Learning can be more effective when learners take control of their own learning because they learn what they are ready to learn (Ellis & Sinclair 1989:2).
3. Those learners who are responsible for their own learning can carry on learning outside the classroom (Ellis & Sinclair 1989:2).
4. Learners who know about learning can transfer learning strategies to other subjects (cf. Hallgarten & Rostworowska 1985:4).
5. Strategies help students to handle different task types and learning situations efficiently and with confidence (Victori & Lockhart 1995:223).
6. Use of appropriate learning strategies enables students to take responsibility for their own learning by enhancing learner autonomy, independence and self-direction (Oxford & Nyikos 1989:291).
7. "... cognitive psychology shows that learning strategies help learners to assimilate new information into their own existing mental structures of schemata, thus creating increasingly rich and complex schemata" (Brown & Palinscar 1982);
8. Unlike most other learner characteristics (e.g. aptitude, attitude, motivation, personality, general cognitive style), learning strategies are readily teachable (Brown 1987).

These benefits arise from explicit training in the use of a broad range of strategies that can be utilised throughout the language learning process, giving students the necessary tools to:

1. self-diagnose their strengths and weaknesses in language learning;
2. become more aware of what helps them to learn the language they are studying most efficiently;
3. develop a broad range of problem-solving skills;
4. experiment with both familiar and unfamiliar learning strategies;
5. make decisions about how to approach a language task;
6. monitor and self-evaluate their performance;
7. transfer successful strategies to new learning contexts. (Weaver & Cohen, 1998:66)

O'Malley (1987:134) warns that "research is needed that analyzes the effects of strategy training on integrative language tasks such as listening and speaking", since much of the research carried out on learning strategy training was not done in a regular classroom, and Bialystok (1981) suggests two questions needing further examination before conclusive pedagogical implications can be made: i) it needs to be demonstrated that second language learners can be taught to use these strategies in systematic ways; and ii) it needs to be demonstrated that such formal learning of the strategies has the desired effects on second language proficiency.

A tabular representation of findings relating to learner training (table XVIII, below) completes this section:

Continue reading this literature review ... (self-assessment) 

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[9] Gange's (1980) definition of a good learner includes "good thinkers and problem solvers (whose) cognitive strategies enable them to exercise control over their own learning." Rubin's 'successful learner' seems lacking in such qualities.