英语学习策略与技巧教程教师用书unit4

Unit 4 Learning Styles and Strategies
Aims and Objectives
This unit is to introduce different learning styles and strategies. After learning this unit, the
students will know:
1. Learning styles are determined by the learner ‘s nature. They can not be easily changed.
As learners we should know our learning styles and make them serve the goals of L2
learning.
2. Learning strategies are the measures learners take in L2 learning. They can be changed
and trained.
3. What are good language learning strategies and how to promote them.
It is hoped that the students will try to train themselves according to what they have
learned in this unit.
Tasks
1. 1) First, we can conclude that field independence is closely related to classroom learning
that involves analysis, attention to details, and mastering of exercises, drills, and
other focused activities. Second, it is generally agreed that primarily field-dependent
persons will, by virtue of their empathy, social outreach, and perception of other
people, be successful in learning the communicative aspects of a second language.
In conclusion, we can say both the two kinds of styles are important. They deal
with two different kinds of language learning. One kind of learning implies natural,
face-to-face communication, the kind of communication that occurs too rarely in the
average language classroom. The second kind of learning involves the familiar
classroom activities: drills, exercises, tests, and so forth. We can say that natural
language learning in the ―field‖ beyond the onstrains of the classroom, requires a
field-dependent style and the classroom type of learning requires a field-independent
learning.
2) You may have your own answer to this question.
2. The answer varies individually.
3. 1) In second language learning a great amount of information is encountered which is
different from our existing knowledge: words that differ from the native language,
rules that not only differ but that are internally inconsistent because of certain
―exceptions‖, and sometimes a whole cultural system that is distant from that of our
own. It is necessary to be tolerant in successful language learning, at least for certain
periods or stages so that ambiguous items may be given a chance to become resolved
until we are used to them at last. On the other hand, too much tolerance of ambiguity
can have a negative effect. You may become slow in reaching decisions, accepting
almost every proposition before them, not selective in including facts into your
cognitive structure. This may prevent you from learning in a meaningful way.
Linguistic rules, for example, might not be effectively fit into a whole system; rather,
they may be swallowed in meaningless chunks learned by rote.
2) The answer is different in the case of different persons.
4. 1) The implications of this pair of learning styles for language learning are numerous.
First,

it has been found that reflective learners tend to make fewer errors in reading
than impulsive learners and score higher in reading. But impulsive readers are often
fast readers. It is also found that inductive reasoning was found to be more effective
with reflective persons.
In L2 class, teachers tend to judge mistakes too harshly, especially in the case of
a learner with an impulsive style who may be more likely than a reflective person to
gamble at a correct answer. On the other hand, a reflective person may require
patience from the teacher, for the students to struggle with responses. It is also quite
conceivable that those with impulsive styles may go through a number of rapid
transitions of the same grammatical stages of interlanguage, with reflective persons
tending to remain longer at a particular stage with ―larger‖ leaps from stage to stage.
2) The answer varies individually.
5. Refer to the discussion in this section and your own characteristics for answer to this
question.
6. (1) Advance organizers Making a general but comprehensive preview of the organizing
concept or principle in an anticipated learning activity.
(2) Directed attention Deciding in advance to concentrate on general aspects of a task.
(3) Selective attention Paying attention to specific aspects of a task.
(4) Self-management Understanding the conditions that help one learn and arrange
for those conditions to be present.
(5) Self-monitoring Correcting one‘s speech for accuracy in pronunciation,
grammar, vocabulary, or for appropriateness related to the
setting or to the people who are present.
(6) Function planning Planning for and rehearsing linguistic components necessary to
carry out an upcoming language task.
(7) Delayed production Consciously deciding to postpone speaking in order to learn
initially through listening comprehension.
(8) Self-evaluation Thinking about how well you did on a learning task, and rating
yourself on a scale.
7. (1) Repetition: saying what you hear or read again in the same way when you listen to a
native speaker or the teacher, you may repeat his/her pronunciation of a particular
word, the use of a word, and so on.
(2) Resourcing: when you use using dictionaries or other reference books or the Internet
for aid in your understanding of a certain word.
(3) Translation: putting something in one language into its equivalent in another
language when the teacher ask you to translate an item from English into Chinese, or
when you seek by yourself a Chinese equivalent of an English item.
(4) Note-taking: jotting down what you want when you listen to a news programme on
the radio you may take notes to understand it better.
(5) Deduction: when giving a new word, you working out the past tense forms of verbs
after learning the rule of forming regular past tense form.
(6) Contextualization: when you make sentences by using working out the new words or
phrases a

s they are used in the context you have just learned.
(7) Transfer: when you applying the order of Chinese declarative sentence to that of the
English sentences.
(8) Inferencing: when matching an unfamiliar word against available information (a new
word etc).
(9) Classifying: when studying a list of names and classify them grouping a list of names
into males and females.
(10)Predicting: guessing what is to follow or will be learned according to when looking at
unit title and objectives and predict what will be learned.
(11) Inducing: when studying a conversation and discovering the rule for forming the
simple past tense.
(12) Discriminating: when distinguishing between the main idea and supporting
information after reading a passage.
(13) Diagramming: when drawing the picture of a house after reading the description of it.
8
(1) Cooperating sharing ideas and learning with other students
(2) Role-playing
pretending to be somebody else and using the language for the situation you are in
(3) Personalizing
learners share their own opinions, feelings, and ideas about a subject
(4) Question for clarification
asking a teacher or other native speaker for repetition, paraphrasing, explanation, and/or
examples
9. A good Chinese learner of English is one who:
(1) has had strong interest in English since the secondary school;
(2) has a strong motivation to study, and is always very confident in his or her study;
(3) is attentive, acquisitive and responsive in the classroom, always ready to volunteer
questions;
(4) devotes much time outside the classroom to learning the target language;
(5) has a strong drive to communicate, is not inhibited in oral expression, but likes
self-monitoring;
(6) is a good language guesser, and always prefers solving his or her language problems
first to consulting others;
(7) has strong desire to surpass his or her peers;
(8) is willing to take part in a teaching experiment.
10. The ideas behind each of the suggestions are:
(1) lower fewer inhibitions (2) encouraging risk-taking
(3) developing intrinsic motivation (4) engaging in cooperative learning
(5) using right brain processes (6) promoting ambiguity tolerance
(7) practising intuition (8) processing error properly (9) setting personal goals
Home Assignment
1. Learning style mediates between emotion and cognition, as you will soon discover. For
example, a reflective style invariably grows out of a reflective personality or reflective
mood. An impulsive emotional state, on the other hand, usually arises out of an impulsive
emotional state. People‘s styles are determined by the way they internalize their total
environment, and since that internalization process is not strictly cognitive, we find that
physical, affective, and cognitive domains merge in learning styles.
2. You probably remember those pictures books you read when you were a child. It can be
found in those colouring bo

oks you pored over as a child, There was a picture of a forest
scene with exotic trees and flowers, and a caption under the picture saying ―Find the
hidden monkeys in the trees‖. If you looked carefully, you soon began to spot them, some
upside-down, some sideways, some high and some low, a dozen or so monkeys under the
guise of lines which at first sight looked like just leaves and trees. The ability to find
those hidden monkeys hinged upon your field-independent style.
3. The scores the students get vary according to different persons. It can be generally
concluded that category 1 and 2 are usually indicative of successful approaches to
language learning.
Notes for the teacher
Suggestions for strategy training
(1) Training and practice should be intense and constant in order to minimize the strong
effect of the previous negative learning strategies.
(2) Training should be diversified and not limited to one and the same strategy only,
because there are more than one good learning strategies leading to the success of
foreign language learning.
(3) Strategy training should not be isolated from language learning because the purpose
of training is, above all, to improve language learning.
(4) Emphasis should be laid on repeated practice of good strategy rather than on rote
memorization. Written principles of good strategy will not become effective unless
they are integrated into the learners‘ learning habits.
(5) As learners, the students are encouraged to exchange their learning experience and
methods in and after class and learn from one another.
Identifying good language learning strategy
H. Stern (1983) noted that if a learner hopes to become successful in language he should
follow the ten specific principles listed below:
(1) A personal learning style or positive learning strategies:
(2) An active approach to the learning task:
(3) A tolerant and outgoing approach to the target language and empathy with its speakers;
(4) Technical know-how about how to tackle a language;
(5) Strategies of experimentation and planning with the object of developing the new
language into an ordered system and of revising this systems progressively;
(6) Constantly searching for meaning;
(7) Willingness to use the language in real communication;
(8) Willingness to practice; (9) Self-monitoring and critical sensitivity to language use;
(10) Developing the target language more and more as a separate reference system and
learning to think in it.
4. This activity is to engage students to do observation in order to raise their awareness of
different learning styles.
5. Students might give different answers. The main purpose is to motivate students to reflect
on what they have just learned.