State of the art article

Learner strategies
S. H. McDonough University of Essex, UK

1. Introduction McDonough (1995: 2-6) discusses the often over-

lapping uses of the terms strategies, skills, and
There has long existed both pedagogic and research
processes, pointing out that 'strategy' has at least
interest in learners' solutions to learning problems.This
four senses, guiding principle, heuristic estimation,
emerged in recent times as a reaction to behaviourist compensation mechanism, and plan for action.
conceptions of the learner as the locus of a mass of Furthermore, skills, process and strategy may be co-
stimulus-response connections, the internal structure terminous with various kinds of cognitive mecha-
of which remained unspecified because unobservable. nism, some of which are automatic and not available
The strategies discussed in the early stages related for conscious manipulation or inspection, and some
mainly to classical linguistic categories such as gram- of which are. Johnson (1996) discusses the notion of
mar, phonology and semantics. In the intervening skills in language learning from the perspective of
years, strategy studies have investigated the microstruc- cognitive theory, but does not situate strategy clearly
ture of learner response to new language, looking at in his scheme.
learners' solutions to processing problems, to anticipat-
An early stimulus to the investigation of strategies
ed or actual communication problems, to the need to
for second language learning was the programmatic
compensate for perceived lack of knowledge or skill,
work of Rubin (1975) and Stern (1975) describing
and to problems in the use of language to perform strategies which could discriminate between good
tasks. Such knowledge about learner behaviour could, and poor learners, and which could be recommend-
it has been claimed, be used to inform pedagogy and ed as good practice for learning. Stern's original
reduce dogma, to provide cognitive mechanisms and list of ten strategies, which he nominated as being
contribute knowledge of the process of reading, talk- 'features that mark out good language learning'
ing, listening, and writing, to elaborate the elective (1975:31) were:
component of language acquisition, to explain lan-
guage acquisition and to explain individual differences 1. A personal learning style or positive learning
in rate and route of learning. The product of strategy strategies
investigations, the various lists of strategies that have 2. An active approach to the task
been identified as useful for learning, have been utilised 3. A tolerant and outgoing approach to the target
as content for instruction, with the teaching of strate- language and empathy with its speakers
4. Technical know-how about how to tackle a
gies under the guise of'learner training' actually substi-
language
tuting for language instruction in some programmes.
5. Strategies of experimentation and planning with
The concept of strategy has however proved diffi- the object of developing the new language into
cult to define in an agreed fashion, as Ellis, R. (1994: an ordered system and of revising this system
530) comments. Cohen (1998: 5) provides the fol- progressively
lowing statement: 6. Constantly searching for meaning
Second language learner strategies encompass both second lan- 7. Willingness to practise
guage learning and second language use strategies. Taken togeth- 8. Willingness to use the language in real communica-
er they constitute the steps or actions consciously selected by tion
learners either to improve the learning of a second language, the
use of it, or both. 9. Self-monitoring and critical sensitivity to language
use
Steven McDonough is Lecturer in Applied Linguistics 10. Developing the target language more and more as a
in the Department of Language and Linguistics, separate reference system, and learning to think in it.
University of Essex, UK (email: mcdon@essex.ac.uk). They were subsequently tested and, in reduced form,
His research interests are in the psychology of second partially substantiated in the 'Good Language
language learning, and he has published three books Learner' study of Naiman, Frohlich, Stern and
(Psychology in Foreign Language Teaching, Tedesco (1978).
George Allen and Unwin, 1981 and 1986; Strategy Strategies have been isolated and described for
and Skill in Learning a Foreign Language, Arnold, learning a second language, for learning to learn a
1995; Research Methods for English Language language, for performing in and using the language,
Teachers (withj. E. McDonough), Arnold, 1997) and for communicating in the language and for compen-
various articles in this area and on its relation to English sating for lack of knowledge of breakdown of com-
language teaching. munication, for the exercise of language in different

Lang.Teach. 32,1-18. Printed in the United Kingdom © 1999 Cambridge University Press 1

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 Learner strategies
macro-skill areas such as reading, writing, talking, Language Learning (SILL), which had three classes
and listening, and for coping with difficult elements of 'direct' strategies, Memory, Cognitive, and
of language instruction such as classroom presenta- Compensation strategies, and three classes of'indi-
tion and instruction and taking tests. Connections rect' strategies, Metacognitive, Affective, and Social.
with strategic behaviour have been demonstrated Criticisms have been levelled at all these ways of
for motivation, emotions such as anxiety and self- dividing and labelling the field. In addition, students
confidence, and with other factors such as proficien- of strategy use in particular areas of language use
cy and sex of the learner. have produced more specific taxonomies, for exam-
This range has motivated the increased use of the ple for reading, writing, listening, test-taking. In the
term learner strategies (Cohen, 1998; Wenden and next section the problems with the taxonomic
Rubin, 1987) as opposed to the narrower conception approach will be aired.
of learning strategies, and this term is also redolent of Researchers have developed a number of ways of
the learners' active participation in the learning obtaining information about strategic behaviour, and
process, not simply as a performer, as in audio-lingual standards of research have developed as experience
methods of teaching, but as a problem-solver and with different kinds of data and methods has been
reflective organiser of the knowledge and skills on gained. Cohen (1987) discussed the shortcomings of
offer in the language exposure and required for a purely observational approach and develops the
effective language use. However, learner strategy advantages of verbal report, distinguishing between
work has not been confined to language study: con- introspection and retrospection, and, in his terminol-
currently there has been considerable interest and ogy, between self-observation and self-revelation.
research in the general educational field in 'thinking Verbal reporting methods, usually referred to as 'pro-
skills' programmes and learning strategies derived tocol analysis' or 'think-aloud', have, however, gained
independently of language learning problems considerably in power, sophistication, and popularity,
as experience with their use has increased, and meth-
(Williams and Burden, 1997: 143). Nisbet and
ods of countering their disadvantages have been
Shucksmith (1986) trace the history of learning
developed. Ericsson and Simon (1987, 1993) pre-
strategies, ideas about learning to learn, and improve-
sented careful arguments for this method and these
ment of study skills back to the beginning of the
kinds of data to be considered valuable and valid,
century and beyond. As we shall see, the specifically
under strict data-gathering conditions, refuting earli-
linguistic provenance of the strategies people use for
er criticisms within psychology raised by Nisbett and
solving language problems is quite narrow: strategies Wilson (1977). Poulisse et al. (1987) noted that retro-
are predominantly general mental mechanisms spective verbal reporting methods nearly doubled
applied as the learner thinks fit. the number of identifications of use of compensatory
Tarone (1977) drew an often quoted distinction strategies over the number identified by other means
between communication, learning, and production such as discourse analysis, taking account also of the
strategies, on the basis of the purpose of the strategic instances where verbal reporting disconfirmed iden-
behaviour - repairing or forestalling communication tifications. Cohen and Scott (1996: 89-105) and
breakdown, expanding language knowledge, or exer- Cohen (1998: Chapter 3) analyse the procedures,
cising a receptive or productive skill. The difficulty advantages and disadvantages of six methods of doing
with such a distinction is simply that it rests on learn- research on strategies:
er's purpose, which may not be so precise: a learner
may use a strategy for making sense of a difficulty in • Oral interviews and written questionnaires (for
a reading passage, which enables the learner to example, Carrell, 1989; Oxford, 1990)
remember some new language item. However, they • Observation (as in O'Malley et al. 1985)
may have been reading the passage in the first place • Verbal report (as in Anderson & Vandegrift 1996;
to expand their knowledge of the language. On the Block, 1986)
other hand, one cannot assume that a strategy for • Diaries and Dialogue journals (as in Oxford, Lavine
avoiding communication breakdown, like circumlo- etal. in Oxford, 1996)
cution, will result in any new language being learnt, • Recollection studies (Pickett, 1978; Poulisse et al.,
though it may. Since strategy use is usually inferred 1987)
from questionnaire or verbal report data or just from • Computer tracking (Baily in Oxford, 1996).
performance data, independent evidence of purpose
would require a further level of self-observation or None of these methods is without problems, and
recollection. O'Malley and Chamot (1987, 1990) there is always a danger that method predetermines
presented another three-way division, which drew the kind of results obtained. However, given the
on Flavell's concept of metacognition: Metacognitive mixture of 'hard' and 'soft' data, and of quantitative
strategies, Cognitive strategies, and Social-affective and qualitative methods of analyses represented, the
strategies. Oxford (1990) presented a system of classi- technique of data triangulation (Denzin, 1978) is
fication which formed the basis of the most compre- often used to provide stabilisation of the data and
hensive questionnaire, the Strategy Inventory for interpretive clarity in particular studies.

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2. Theoretical foundations
In first language acquisition research, a strategic
approach was developed in Slobin's (1973) operating
principles for a child learning the structure of the
language of the environment. Such 'principles' as 'Pay
attention to the ends of words' hid a number of issues
which have since proved to be highly controversial.
'Attention' was a traditional psychological category
of cognition; since it is to some extent under volun-
tary control, it is often associated with conscious
mental activity. However, Slobin did not claim that
his operating principles were conscious choices in
the mind of the neonate, far less that babies could
inspect their own conscious choices, Rather, the
operating principles were means for getting neces-
sary evidence for the construction of grammars, and
some strength of claim was made that they were uni-
versal principles of language acquisition, and there-
fore innate features of the operation of the linguistic
system (expressed in a sense anthropomorphically).
Others argued that such principles were general, not
specifically linguistic, features of the intelligent brain,
used in other areas of cognition. Furthermore,
Slobin's principles assumed the pre-existence of vari-
ous kinds of linguistic knowledge, such as 'word' in
the example, which implies systematic segmentation
of the stream of speech. Later attempts at developing
the notion of learnability of language have rejected
this simple assumption in favour of much more com-
plex theories of die innate faculty of language. Thus,
early attempts to use the notion of strategies in
language acquisition confused conscious and uncon-
scious activity, linguistic and non-linguistic cate-
gories, and made unsubstantiated assumptions about
the sophistication of genetically endowed linguistic
knowledge.
However, such early work in first language acqui-
sition inspired several important pieces of work in
second language development, such as Stevens'
(1984) research on the learning of French in
Canadian schools and Selinker's (1972) theory of
Interlanguage.
The first was performed in the context of the
establishment of 'immersion' teaching in Canadian
schools, which was held to simulate the conditions of
first language acquisition for second language learn-
ers. Stevens isolated a number of strategies used by
her sample for making sense of grammatical and
phonological difficulties in the French they encoun-
tered and had to use in pursuance of their ordinary
school working day. Her study used young beginners
in a second language; another study of young begin-
ners and the way their strategic repertoire grew was
reported by Chesterfield and Chesterfield (1985).
The second drew on the applied linguistic tradi-
tion of languages in contact and first language inter- affective strategies (including coping with one's own
ference mechanisms as traced historically by Selinker emotions, motivation, and enlisting the help of others
(1992), specifying a number of strategies used by sec- via appeal) are less easily incorporated in a cognitive
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Learner strategies
ond language learners on the basis of the evidence of
error analysis, and inventing the powerful but con-
troversial concept of'fossilization', whereby an error
became ineradicable through learning or teaching.
Theoretical contributions from studies in educa-
tion, not specifically with reference to language, but
particularly to maths, science, and reading, have been
outlined by Nisbet and Shucksmith (1986, Chapters
2 & 3), who reviewed meta-analyses of study skills
manuals from most of the century, and went on to
describe the controversies surrounding the notion of
a hierarchy of strategies, from 'planfulness' (Brown,
1974, cited ibid. 1986: 28) through macro and micro
strategies to Flavell's (1976, cited ibid. 1986:30) con-
cept of metacognition, and criticisms of it.
Within discussions of strategies for language
learning, however, the most usual theoretical basis
referred to has been the various forms of informa-
tion theory approaches to cognition (Anderson,
1983; Johnson, 1996; McLaughlin, 1987; O'Malley
and Chamot 1990). In particular, O'Malley and
Chamot (1990) attempted to locate their work with-
in an expansion of Anderson's Adaptive Control of
Thought (ACT) model, building on Anderson's view
of strategies within the development of procedural
knowledge. However, they also note that the concept
of strategies itself does not play a major role in
Anderson's theory. Neither does it in Johnson's
(1996) view of language learning as skill acquisition.
Elaborations of cognitive theory to include accounts
of the role of strategies in language learning have
been presented by Faerch and Kasper (1983a) for
elaboration and reduction strategies and by Bialystok
(1990) in particular for communication and com-
pensation strategies. McDonough (1998) discusses
the internal structure of strategies, exploring the
possible theoretical bases for the notion of a hierar-
chy of strategies in terms of cognitive load, power of
application, and some other dimensions.
Applied Linguistics theorists have attempted to
integrate the notion of learning and communication
strategies in particular in theories of communicative
competence (Canale and Swain, 1980), to capture
the perception that it is part of a bilingual's skill to be
able to solve communication problems and operate
language expansion mechanisms, and that, further-
more, such a strategic 'competence' is part of what
needs to be taught and tested in an overall language
teaching operation. Canale and Swain (1980) includ-
ed 'strategic competence' within their concept of
communicative competence, together with gram-
matical, discourse, and sociolinguistic competence.
Bachman (1990) argued that strategic competence
was different from language competence but com-
plementary.
As O'Malley and Chamot (1990: 44) recognised,
 Learner strategies
framework, though as examples of learner strategies,
they are no less important than cognitive and meta-
cognitive strategies.
There is a pervading assumption, theoretically
codified in Anderson's three stages of skill acquisition
(cognition, association, and autonomy) (O'Malley
and Chamot 1990:78-9), and seen as a broad aim for
learning-to-learn activities (Nisbet and Shucksmith
1986: 12, 92), that learning strategies promote
autonomous learning. Wenden (1991) is based on
this assumption, and the book provides exhaustive
documentation of the desirability of autonomous
learning and of practical steps for developing learner
autonomy, mainly in the sense of learners taking
responsibility for their own learning and developing
strategies for doing so. Crabbe (1993) discusses
research showing that, while teachers often give
copious procedural instruction on how to accom-
plish activities designed to promote interaction and
independent learning, they do not give instruction in
how to learn language from these activities. That is
assumed to occur 'naturally'. Fleming and Walls
(1998) found that pupils learning French and
German in England spontaneously used a wide
selection of strategies in their spoken and written
tasks, and they argue that guidelines and criteria for
meta-cognitive and cognitive strategies should be
made explicit in the National Curriculum to raise
teachers' awareness of them and enable teachers to
develop them in their classes.
There is some tension between regarding strate-
gies as part of a theory of learning, describing the
development of autonomy, and the implication that
many learners need instruction in operating strate-
gies independently. It is this gap between what learn-
ers can do and what they will do which provides the
justification for learner training programmes. Two
small-scale studies of self-directed learning further
underline the point. Nakhoul (1993) describes the
development of successful use of self-access facilities
at Hong Kong University, noting the difficulties stu-
dents experienced and the need for teacher support
through tutorial; Jones (1993), in the context of an
evaluative study of'teach yourself material, notes the
difficulties such lone learners have with self-study
packages and the relative paucity of'learner support'
features embodied in the materials. He quotes a diary
study (1992, cited in Jones 1993) of learning
Hungarian in which he adopted an autonomous
approach after gaining certain kinds of basic lexical
knowledge, partly as a reaction to the rigidity of the
self-study packages used.
Another difficult issue that is raised by the
involvement of learner strategies with autonomy is
culture. Nakhoul's students were Hong Kong
Chinese, whose culture may have made them more
resistant than Western students both to group discus-
sion methods including a proportion of self-disclosure,
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methods of preparation for learner autonomy and to
autonomous learning itself. Smith (1998) discusses
both the traditional positions with regard to these
issues and the more recent notion of student interde-
pendence and ability to work collaboratively with-
out a teacher, being promoted in some countries of
the Pacific Rim (Aoki and Smith 1996). Politzer and
MacGroarty (1985) demonstrated that students from
different broad cultural groups (Latin American and
Asian) achieved success using different kinds of study
behaviours, some characteristic of traditional notions
of'Good Language Learners' and some not. A wealth
of evidence on the cross-cultural perspective on
learner strategies is given in Oxford (1996),in partic-
ular in the articles by Bedell and Oxford (1996:
Chapter 4) and Levine, Reves, and Leaver (1996:
Chapter 3).
A further theoretical issue involved in the descrip-
tion of strategies is consciousness. Bialystok (1990)
pointed out that strategies are often assumed to be
part of conscious, voluntary behaviour, but this may
not necessarily be so. Part of the difficulty lies in the
vagueness of the concept of consciousness: taking
Schmidt's (1994, 1995) deconstruction of this con-
cept into his quartet of'intention', 'attention', 'notic-
ing' (awareness), and 'understanding' (control), it is
evident that both cognitive and meta-cognitive
strategies can be conceptualised within these cate-
gories, but it is also remarkable that Schmidt's own
discussions of explicit and implicit learning (concen-
trating in particular on the role of'noticing') largely
ignore the research on strategic behaviour. More
direct articulation of this issue is given by Ellis, N.
(1994) discussing conscious processes in vocabulary
acquisition: the involvement of an 'explicit concep-
tual system' and strategies (see also Ellis and Beaton,
1993).
Finally in this section, strategy use has been shown
in various studies to be affected by and to affect
diverse other issues such as motivation, gender, cog-
nitive style, language proficiency level, and age
(Erten, 1998; Kaylani, 1996; Oxford, 1990; Oxford
and Crookall, 1989; Rubin, 1975). Nayak et al. (1990)
report an intriguing study comparing learning strate-
gy use by monolingual and multilingual adults.
Multilinguals did not appear to be overall superior in
learning ability, but were more flexible and had bet-
ter ability to adjust their strategies to task require-
ments. However, this study used mini-artificial
languages rather than natural foreign languages, so its
relevance to learning real foreign languages may be
in doubt. These variables constrain the amount and
variety of strategy use, and crucially the success of
particular strategies in particular circumstances. For
this reason, predictions of what will be good or poor
strategies to use or to recommend are not reliable, in
the present state of knowledge considerably less so
than weather forecasting.
 Learner strategies
3. Strategic performance in different certain kinds of strategies and certain combinations
skill areas of strategies. Earlier, Hosenfeld (1976) had attempted
to compare, using an interventionist questioning
Reading technique, what good and poor second language
There has been a great deal of work on the strategies readers were doing. Carrell (1989) investigated self-
used by readers in their first language (LI) and their reported meta-cognitive strategy use in a question-
second language (L2). In the first language, the naire-based study. Very few of her questions (which
ground-breaking work of Olshavsky (1976-7) initi- were in four groups, concerned with readers' confi-
ated a long series of strategic investigations of both dence in the L2, repairs, effectiveness of strategies,
poor readers and good readers. Many people think and difficulties) could be shown to be related to first
that they do not use strategies in reading in their first language reading, and the two different groups
language, that it is an 'automatic' process, but research (Spanish speaking learners of English and American
has shown that this is not true. There is a cline of learners of Spanish) rated different strategies as
reading skill for native speakers and strategy use is important in the second language. This was affected
evident wherever a reader recognises that they are by their proficiency in the second language. A study
beginning not to comprehend the text, or that their by Block (1986,1992) looked at generally unsuccess-
interpretation ceases to be plausible. This may hap- ful readers working in their LI or L2 in an American
pen at word level, sentence level (even the native college context, and showed how the upper group,
language) or particularly at the level of discourse, which used strategies characterised by an ability to
where the author's intentions may be misinterpreted take the text as a relatively self-contained problem
leading to the construction of an unfaithful model of (called 'Integrators'), contrasted with the lower
the intended meaning because the overall context of group, who allowed their own reactions to the text
the passage is inaccurately located (Waern, 1988). to affect their interpretation (called 'Non-integra-
Ericsson (1988) in the same journal presents a com- tors'). Further developments in reading strategies in
prehensive review of verbal report studies on text L2 have been reported by Aslanian (1985), using
comprehension, mainly drawing on LI studies. One questions to reveal misunderstandings, Cavalcanti
of his conclusions was that verbal reporting methods (1987), using pause-length measurements to evaluate
slow down, but do not change, the normal processes strategy use and success of interpretation, Davis and
readers use when they are not giving a concurrent Bistodeau (1993), Kember and Gow (1994), Paran
report, not talking while reading. Pressley and (1996) andTaillefer (1996).Talbot (1997) reported a
Afflerbach (1995) present a monograph of meta- study evaluating the success of a programme of
analysis of thirty-eight verbal protocol studies of instruction in foreign language reading strategies in
native speakers reading and systematise their findings Singapore. Typically, studies of individual skill areas
into a theory of'constructively responsive reading'. have needed to develop specific taxonomies of
While the balance of strategy use in second lan- strategies for that area, which go beyond the more
guages may be different, requiring for example more general strategy inventories developed by, for exam-
work on word-identification than normal for native ple, O'Malley and Chamot (1990) and Oxford
speakers, this work has enormous implications for (1990); though often those inventories form the basis
the theory of reading in a second language. of the specific skill research.
Work in reading in a second language has uncov-
ered strategy use in four main groups (Sarig, 1987):
Writing
• Technical Aids (like skimming, marking the text, The productive skill of writing in a foreign language
using context, recognising cognates, consulting has also been studied in terms of strategies, under the
glossaries); guise of'writing process research'. This also originat-
• Clarification and Simplification (like paraphrase, ed in classic studies of performing in the first lan-
syntactic simplification, identifying the grammatical
guage, as did the reading studies (Flower and Hayes,
category of words, using inference);
1980, 1981; Perl, 1980, 1981; see also Smagorinsky,
• Coherence Detection (like keeping the meaning of
1989, 1994). Most studies of L2 writing strategies
the passage in mind, using background knowledge,
recognising text structure, anticipating context, dis- have used as their starting point the categories and
criminating main and subsidiary propositions); time analysis system developed by Perl (1981), adapt-
• Monitoring (like consciously changing the plan, ed for the second language situation in various ways.
varying reading speed, deserting a hopeless phrase, People have mostly been studied while under
stating failure to understand a word or clause, ques- instructions to talk while writing, giving a written
tioning information). product and a correlated commentary at the same
time. As always, some people are more comfortable
Sarig's own research was on school leavers reading in with this situation than others, which means the
a foreign language, and she noted how successful cre- quality of data for strategy analysis varies consider-
ation of plausible interpretations was dependent on ably between writers.

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 Learner strategies
A number of sharp criticisms of the talking-while-
writing approach have been made. Cooper and
Holzmann (1983) took Flower and Hayes to task for
treating what people say they do as data for what
they actually do. Dobrin (1986) particularly high-
lighted the difficulties of interpreting what people
say in terms of strategies and the impossibility of
making any kind of bridge between processes that
are open to conscious choice and inspection ('heeded'
processes in Ericsson and Simon's terms, 1993) and
automatic processes. Berkenkotter (1983) raised the
objection that the strategies revealed by verbal report
by an experienced publishing author were mostly
not recognised by him as his usual approach to writ-
ing, and therefore were associated with the abnormal
situation of talking while writing rather than the
normal situation of writing alone and silently. When
using this method of self-revelation with non-native
speakers there is the additional problem of the lan-
guage used for report (usually the native language)
being different from the language used for writing.
This point in fact raises a number of interesting
questions concerning the language of planning and
rehearsal used by L2 writers which are discussed
below.
Investigations of writing strategies in both the first
language and second languages began in detail fol-
lowing the development of the theory of recursive
writing processes (Perl, 1980) in contrast to the earli-
er assumptions of linear stage theory. Perl had sug-
gested that writers produce text by a series of
recursive processes, somewhat independently of how
they originally planned what they wanted to say.
Whereas linear stage theory held that text was the
last stage of a planning process going on in ever
increasing detail from idea to linguistic text, in the
order of ideas in the original plan, the recursion the-
ory proposed that text was decided on by constant
reference to the text just produced, individual signifi-
cant words in the text, and to a vague concept of
Perl's, the 'felt sense' of the text as it grew. The picture
of text production that this gave was of a writer con-
stantly evaluating and reviewing the sentences just
produced and their immediate continuations, in the
light of the text already on paper, a picture which
neatly incorporated the idea (Britton, 1983) of'shap-
ing at the point of utterance'. Zamel's (1982)
'Writing: the process of discovering meaning' takes
the same idea further, claiming that writers only
finally work out what they mean through choosing
the words, sentence structure, rhetorical frameworks,
and so forth, of the text they are producing. Flower
and Hayes (1981) formalised these ideas into a model
of the writing process which involved three primary
processes of planning, translating, and reviewing,
drawing on secondary processes and much stored
information, in particular the writer's experience of
writing the current and other texts. This model has
been very influential in studies of both LI and L2
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writing, by skilled and unskilled writers, but doubts
have been raised about its status as a theory of writ-
ing, and about the further proposal that verbal report
methods can test it. One obvious shortcoming is the
lack of any provision for evaluation of the product by
others and the incorporation of feedback from audi-
ence and/or teacher.
Several studies have looked at planning by L2
writers. Raimes (1985, 1987) noted that many did
not spend much time planning before plunging
straight into text production, then rehearsing the
continuation. For many of her writers, planning con-
sisted of repeating the set title (even just repeating
one troublesome word in the title). This may have
been an artifact of the situation of writing to a set
topic in a research situation, but it is a frequent
teaching situation as well. Other studies (Lay, 1982;
Zamel, 1983) have, however, made similar findings.
More detailed studies of planning were carried out
by Jones and Tetroe (1987), who investigated both
the language of planning and the cognitive load of
certain types of writing task. Specifically, they com-
pared the moves of intermediate writers (preparing
for university study in their L2) planning in their
native language (Spanish) or English, and their subse-
quent writing. They found that planning in the first
language by and large produced better results in
the second language writing, but the particular task
(narrative, exposition, completing given a start and
completing towards a given end) made a consider-
able difference. Friedlander (1990) compared writers
planning to write on themes they had learned about
either in the LI or the L2, in the matching or non-
matching language. He found that, indeed, better
plans and better L2 essays were produced in the
matching language situation (i.e., writing in Chinese
on a Chinese topic and in English on an American
topic), so planning in the language of knowledge
acquisition helped the construction of text in the
second language. He also found that there were a
number of consistent differences in the plans con-
structed for the culturally familiar topic and the
novel topic. The plans for the Chinese topic were by
and large shorter and more sparse, consisting of
headings and single words giving an indication of
topics and topic order; plans for the English topic
were more likely to be more detailed, and to consist
of larger stretches of text which then could be incor-
porated into the final text.
Many other, at the time unpublished, pieces of
research into writing processes of second language
writers were reviewed usefully by Krapels (1990).
Krapels concluded that the body of research she
reported showed that unskilled writers in English as
L2 suffer from a lack of composing competence
rather than linguistic competence; that evidence on
LI and L2 similarities is somewhat contradictory;
that code-switching in planning and text-production
between LI and L2 is quite common but by no

means universal; and that LI use while writing in L2
may be a device for sustaining the composing
process, an organisational aid, and sometimes the
result of the demands of certain writing tasks.
A piece of research which led directly to a set of
instructional materials for introducing 'Process writ-
ing' into EFL classrooms was Arndt's (1987) study of
six Chinese writers, in which she compared their
verbal protocols while writing in Chinese and in
English. She found that there were many similarities
between their approach to writing in each language,
so much so that she felt able to give each writer an
individual label that characterised their approach. To
what extent such a conception masks underlying
generalisations is a question for further research with
larger samples.The writing textbook she co-authored
(Arndt andWhite, 1991) attempted to institutionalise,
in prescriptions for classroom activities, the variety
and creativity of writing process research. For teach-
ers of writing, one of the most important areas of this
research remains the written interaction between
teacher and student, in particular the provision of
feedback ('coaching from the margins', Leki, 1990)
and the learning writers' use of that feedback. A vari-
ety of methods involving product and process have
been used to research the many issues surrounding
feedback, its effectiveness, and the ways students
utilise it. Semke (1984) found that it was by and large
ignored; Zamel (1985) found that it was often con-
fusing, self-contradictory, based on misreadings of the
writer's intention, and contributed to worsening text
quality rather than improvement; Fathman and
Whalley (1990) found that feedback on different
aspects (grammar and content) was not equally effec-
tive; Hall (1990) investigated students' reactions to
revising their work and evaluating it; Cohen (1991)
and Cohen and Cavalcanti (1990) found that stu-
dents had a variety of reactions to feedback, some
even resenting it as an intrusion into their personal
space, and that the same students had definite opin-
ions about particular kinds of feedback. They also
found a rank order of'popularity' of actions taken on
the basis of feedback, from 'making a mental note'
down to rephrasing and redrafting, and finally — and
least popular - writing a fair copy. Of course, what a
student does with feedback on a composition is
going to depend partly on the relation between that
task and the next one. Remembering a detailed
comment from one attempt is important if the next
task is a redraft (not the norm for Cohen and
Cavalcanti's Brazilian university students in either
Portuguese or English), but of no great use if the
next task is a different kind of writing on a different
topic. What is still unclear in this area is what strate-
gies, if any, learners adopt to extract general lessons
they can use to improve their next piece from partic-
ular comments on pieces they have already written.
Research by Keh (1990) on students' reactions to
feedback in a peer-conferencing situation showed,
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Learner strategies
again, marked preferences for sentence-length, rea-
soned comments rather than one word or symbol
and a wish for as full a response to a particular point
as possible. Questions as comments were not unwel-
come, even if they were challenging. One of Keh's
conclusions was to write herself guidelines as to the
most welcome kinds of comments. So here, one out-
come could be said to be decision about teachers'
strategies, but still not any detailed information about
students' processing strategies. Ferris (1997) also
investigated the frequency and reception of a
teacher's written comments on L2 texts. Radecki
and Swales (1988) identified both 'receptors' and
'resistors' to teachers' written comments among their
college-level ESL writers. In many cases, what deter-
mined the writers' attitude to the comments seemed
to be their own evaluation of their own work, but
presumably this in turn was determined by individ-
ual personalities and their attributions of compe-
tence to the teachers - not linguistic competence,
but competence to criticise their work. Radecki and
Swales were not able to delve into those aspects in
depth within the framework of their study.
Manchon Ruiz (1997) presents a review of L2
composing strategies which arose out of work on the
relationship between LI writing ability and L2 profi-
ciency in L2 composition, highlighting in particular
the role of'restructuring'. Porte (1997) investigated a
number of underachieving L2 writers, and while he
found they could describe their revision strategies,
there was a strong implication that these were prag-
matic reactions to what they thought their teachers
preferred and what seemed to be the message from
the feedback they were given. He therefore surmised
that the writers' primary concern with surface arid
mechanical text alterations was a product of the
learning situation. This result echoed, using a differ-
ent methodology, Yagelski's (1995) finding that LI
writing students tended to follow the patterns
embedded in the classroom context (in particular a
focus on lower-level concerns) in their revision
strategies, and not to use the opportunity to recon-
sider the meaning, argument structure,the quality of
the points and the examples, the order of the main
sections, etc. Cumming and So (1996), studying ESL
writers, also identified a predominance of local focus
in discussing drafts with their tutors, again largely
driven by the tutors' definition of the problem. These
pieces of research raise, but do not solve, the question
of how learners evaluate their tutors' suggestions and
how, especially in the case of weak students, consid-
eration can be given to deeper concerns of structure,
argument, and quality during the revision process.
The small scale in terms of number of L2 writers
investigated and the variety of methods used (prod-
uct measures, questionnaires, verbal protocols) in this
area has meant that the amount of reliable informa-
tion on writers' strategies for planning, rehearsal,
production, and exploitation of feedback is limited.
 Learner strategies
However, it is highly suggestive and has already been
used to generate new approaches to writing instruc-
tion in classrooms and ways of offering comments
and evaluative feedback. Notes of caution both about
the research base and in particular about the imple-
mentation of'process writing' as a means of coaching
have been sounded (Horowitz, 1986; Zamel, 1987).
Stratman and Hamp-Lyons (1994) pointed out that
there were many reactive effects in the talking-
while-writing situation used for much of this
research: normal or habitual processes gave way to
different ones when writing under this added and to
some extent alien constraint.This is unhelpful for the
validity of the research, but not unwelcome as a new
tool for use in instruction; just as Hosenfeld (1984)
found that getting readers to talk about their reading
strategies helped them to change, so there may be
certain benefits in getting writers to verbalise what
they think they are doing.
Talking
Studies of strategies used to accomplish talking in a
foreign language have concentrated particularly on
compensatory activities and on pragmatics - learning
to perform certain kinds of speech acts appropriately.
Poulisse et al. (1987) used discourse analysis and a
retrospective verbal report to analyse communication
breakdown and repair strategies in conversations
between Dutch high school students and English
native speakers. Tarone (1977,1980,1981) developed
a taxonomy of communicative strategies which,
grouped as Paraphrase, Borrowing, and Avoidance,
focused principally on what to do when the speaker
cannot find a word or realises that a word is not
going to be understood. Faerch and Kasper (1983b:
20-60) developed a theory of reduction strategies
(avoidance, omission) and achievement strategies
(similar to Tarone's taxonomy) to account for data in
two corpuses of non-native speaker/native speaker
interactions recorded in Denmark and Germany and
reported a study (1983: 210-238) comparing the
utility of the psychological and the interactionist
views of communication strategies. Bialystok (1990:
57-83) reports a study of nine-year-old girls learning
French in an immersion teaching school who were
set simple communicative tasks involving describing
an array of objects on a feltboard to another child
who could not see the original array, but had to
reproduce it on their feltboard, from what the first
child said in French. Consequently most of the task
involved identification of objects and some position-
al information. Her analysis concerned the nature of
the children's attempts to communicate these mean-
ings.and the success of the various solutions.
Interestingly, word coinage had by far the greatest
success rate (96%), indicating that, with two children
of similar linguistic background, a high degree of
agreement can be reached without the use of the
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correct word. These pieces of research represent only
a selection from a growing literature on compensato-
ry strategies (see also Haastrup & Phillipson, 1983;
Varadi, 1980), but most of this literature actually con-
cerns word-level problems.
Olshtain and Cohen (1989) looked at a more
complicated issue in communication: the perfor-
mance of speech acts and how the students learn the
linguistic and cultural criteria for what counts as suc-
cessful performance (just saying 'I'm sorry' is not
necessarily good enough to count as an apology). In
fact, in the language the students were learning,
Hebrew, there are five elements which need to be
present (apology-perhaps with intensifier, explana-
tion, acknowledgement of responsibility, offer of
repair, promise of forbearance), each of which
involves a specific and different performative phrase.
Olshtain and Cohen (1990) found that, since these
involved some cultural differences, direct explanation
by the teacher was the method of learning the stu-
dents favoured most. Cohen and Olshtain (1992)
expanded the task set to include a variety of com-
mon functional language situations (apologising,
complaining, responding, requesting) on role-play
cards to elicit just how learners would go about try-
ing to negotiate these slightly difficult interpersonal
and interactional situations. Cohen (1998: 240-255)
gives a full account of their results and discussed the
research (under the general heading of test-taking,
for this role-play elicitation task is more akin to
communicative performance tests than to the chance
encounters of real life) in terms of methodology,
strategies revealed, focus of attention during process-
ing, the language of thought, and individual differ-
ences of style.
Listening
Listening comprehension is generally regarded as the
most difficult skill by most language learners, and for
many of the same reasons (typically its transient
nature and the limited degree of control by the lis-
tener on the stream of speech) it has proved to be the
most difficult skill to research. Issues in listening
comprehension strategy research parallel those in
reading, to some extent: word identification, con-
struction of interpretations, coherence detection,
establishment of main points and subsidiary points.
But there are some additional problems for listening
comprehension; icking up the pronunciation and
intonation cues, discriminating the salience signals of
content words by stress, identifying the grammatical
cues present in the stream of speech, and coping with
the emotional stress of working at another speaker's
speed. Finally, while many listening comprehension
tasks in classrooms are inauthentic and relate most
directly to listening to radio programmes, ultimately
listening is generically one side of interaction and lis-
tening strategies are geared to preparing a response.

Murphy (1985) had listeners give a verbal report
of what they were doing signalled by stopping the
tape at certain moments. He described the think-
aloud reports so obtained in terms of various word-
identification and coherence detection strategies,
noting what made listening difficult for his learners.
A larger-scale study by O'Malley, Chamot, and
Kupper (1989) using the O'Malley and Chamot
strategy typology found three main groups of strate-
gies in use: self-monitoring, elaboration by using
background knowledge, and inferring the meaning
of words or phrases from context. They divided their
learners into effective and ineffective listeners on the
basis of teachers' observations of their classroom
behaviour and found that the more effective ones
used a more top-down approach, favouring inference
and coherence detection strategies, while the less
effective concentrated on a word by word approach,
working bottom-up. The latter group inevitably ran
into time problems. A large-scale study of listeners by
Vandegrift (Anderson and Vandegrift, 1996) looked
at the strategies used by learners of different grades in
a selection of schools in Canada learning French.The
study used three different methodologies: self-report
through delayed retrospection and a structured inter-
view about strategies, self-observation after an oral
proficiency interview, and self-revelation through
think-aloud. The study produced interesting results
for meta-cognitive and cognitive strategies, but the
coding scheme was found to be inadequate for the
affective area, which was nevertheless shown to be
highly important. The listening comprehension
process that emerges (the tasks were inauthentic
classroom exercises) is nevertheless an interactive
process, success being dependent on drawing on var-
ied sources of information and background knowl-
edge. Some support was found (since some students
participated in all three phases of the methodology)
for the idea that making students more aware of their
own strategies via stimulated recall (on video) and
self-revelation is itself a helpful exercise, promoting
use of meta-cognitive strategies of attention and
elaboration. Young (1996) confirmed some of
Vandegrift's findings in a study of listening compre-
hension among Chinese learners of English in Hong
Kong, and presented very interesting qualitative and
quantitative analyses of the strategies used by these
learners for a variety of text types. The qualitative
analysis in particular demonstrates how individual
learners cope with unknown words, some being able
to hold on to an unknown word while using subse-
quent lines of the passage for identification cues,
while others found that coming across an unknown
word blocked their use of helpful information
occurring later. The quantitative analysis revealed not
only the overall relative frequency of different strate-
gies, but also, through muti-dimensional scaling, their
relative importance. Bacon and Finneman (1990)
were concerned to set the study of students' reactions
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Learner strategies
to and strategies for dealing with comprehension of
authentic listening and reading tasks in the context
of the affective climate of the classroom, as evidenced
by the students' attitudes and motives for learning
foreign languages. Vogely (1995) investigated listen-
ers' reactions to authentic listening tasks. Goh (1997)
used a diary study of performing listening tasks with
young students from the People's Republic of China
learning English in Singapore. The diaries revealed
considerable details, which Goh categorised under
the headings of 'person knowledge' (what they
learned about their own reactions to listening tasks);
'task knowledge' (their experiences and beliefs about
the importance of various features of the listening
task, and about the usefulness of different kinds of
input material); and 'strategic knowledge' (the choic-
es they made for directing their attention during the
tasks and information about strategies that worked
for them and those that did not).The study strongly
implies that the diary-keeping raised the students'
awareness of what they were doing, but is unable to
conclude this since no control or triangulation is
reported. Rost and Ross (1991) took up the question
of learner strategies in listening in an interpersonal
conversation situation, particularly in the use of clar-
ification questions. Rost and Ross found that four
types of clarification question were used successfully
by the more proficient learners: global reprise, local
reprise, forward inferencing, and continuation sig-
nals. In the second part of the study learners were
given training in asking clarification questions, and
in a listening comprehension task using narrative,
they were observed asking such questions. The train-
ing was found to be successful both in improving
their questioning behaviour in interaction and in
improving the text comprehension. The study did
not look at how long-lasting the effect of such train-
ing was, an issue to be taken up later when discussing
strategy training as a specific issue.
Vocabulary
The importance of vocabulary strategies has already
been underlined in previous sections on reading and
listening strategies, and in terms of word-finding and
repair in studies of communication strategies in talk-
ing and writing. In other words, strategies for finding
the meanings of words as encountered, and finding
the right words for meanings (or ways round not
finding the right words) are central to all other lan-
guage use situations. However, vocabulary problems
are also encountered in other ways: how do people
learn new vocabulary whether encountered in nat-
ural communication, reading or listening compre-
hension, or vocabulary expansion exercises or
dictionaries? Findings in this area have been
reviewed by Ahmed (1988) and more recently by
Schmitt (1997). Cohen and Aphek (1981) looked at
vocabulary strategies in word encounters and word-
 Learner strategies
finding tasks in Hebrew L2 classrooms using think-
aloud. Porte (1988) investigated the strategies used
by under-achieving EFL learners to acquire vocabu-
lary, showing that, although many were using strate-
gies characteristic of'Good Language Learners', they
were using a small subset or misapplying them.
Much work has used the concept of keywords or
pegword mnemonic systems. Typically, learners asso-
ciate a well-known native language word that sounds
like the foreign word and link the keyword to the
translation equivalent by some story, imagery, or
other association. Ellis and Beaton (1993) compared
and contrasted keyword methods with other meth-
ods since, as they showed in their review of the key-
word literature, success has been shown for keyword
systems for so-called 'passive' vocabulary (remember-
ing the meanings of foreign words) but not for
'active' vocabulary (remembering the foreign word
for a concept). Ellis and Beaton found that the key-
word imagery method was indeed efficient for trans-
lation into the native language, but was significantly
surpassed by simple rote repetition for translating
into the foreign language, and that a combined strat-
egy was most effective. Interestingly they also found
a part of speech effect: imageable noun keywords
were successful but imageable verbs were not.
Schmitt and Schmitt (reported in Schmitt 1997)
conducted a large-scale survey of vocabulary learn-
ing strategies among Japanese learners, who are used
to a grammar translation method of teaching. Not
surprisingly, they found that rote repetition featured
highly in their ratings of importance, while strategies
based on internal evidence and cross-linguistic paral-
lels were low down on the list.They also found inter-
esting differences in the estimations of utility of the
various strategies as between students in beginner,
intermediate and advanced classes: whether this was
because of growing cognitive maturity or increasing
language learning experience could not be separat-
ed. Lawson and Hogben (1996) report a study of stu-
dents learning Italian vocabulary in a university
context in Australia. By contrast, they did not
attempt to promote particular strategies or compare
imposed strategy use conditions, but observed
through a think-aloud procedure what strategies
were being used. The most frequent strategy
employed was repetition; strategies involving more
detailed internal information available from the
grammatical or phonological shape of the word, or
from the semantic context of the sentence in which
the new word was presented, while successful, were
used far less frequently. The students appeared to rely
on a collection of strategies of medium power; they
might have known more powerful strategies but they
did not use them consistently. Lawson and Hogben
point out that, for vocabulary acquisition, presenting
words in a context which makes it easy for the learn-
er to infer the meaning is likely to result in less effi-
cient learning of the new word precisely because the
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rich context reduces the need for attention to the
word itself. Gu and Johnson (1996) present a rela-
tively large-scale questionnaire study of 850 second
year students at Beijing Normal University, and
looked at the relationships holding between particu-
lar cognitive strategies and measures of proficiency
and vocabulary size. Self-initiation and selective
attention showed the strongest correlations with
general proficiency; contextual guessing, using dic-
tionary look-up for learning, note-taking and other
active strategies like oral repetition also correlated
with both vocabulary size and general proficiency.
An interesting feature of their analysis was the divi-
sion of the respondents into five learning style cate-
gories. The most successful were those students
(small in number) who used reading as a means to
learn vocabulary, and those who activated a wide
range of strategies. Despite the large sample size, Gu
and Johnson acknowledge their study is only
exploratory in nature, and reports beliefs rather than
actual process information. However, the gradual
accretion of quite large-scale studies of the populari-
ty of different strategy types and the correlation with
proficiency measures allows a kind of cost-benefit
analysis of the efficiency of people's solutions to the
problem of acquiring vocabulary, moderated by
analyses of individual differences of approach.
A small-scale study by Erten (1998) looked in
considerable detail at the relationships between pre-
ferred vocabulary learning strategy and learning
style, using a task intended to simulate look-up in a
monolingual dictionary (pairing a word with an L2
gloss expressed in a sentence). One dramatic result of
his study is the effect of first language on the use of
cognate forms as learning devices. Japanese learners
attempted strategies based on such morphological
knowledge significantly less often than Spanish
speakers. Dictionary look-up as a strategy on
encountering a word is itself of interest, as it fre-
quently involves a tension between student prefer-
ence (usually for translation equivalents) and
teaching advice (often for the use of monolingual
dictionaries for accuracy), but further interesting
problems arise when considering how students retain
(from either kind of dictionary) the information
gained, and how they actually interpret either the
translation equivalent (and then remember the for-
eign word) or the L2 gloss obtained. One line of
research on the second problem is Nesi and Meara's
(1994) paper on the 'KIDRULE' strategy, where they
analyse which parts of a dictionary definition are
actually processed and how faults of interpretation
arise. Analysing dictionary look-up procedures is,
however, problematic, since experimenting with dic-
tionary entries removes dictionary look-up from the
normal context, and therefore from the set of deci-
sions about linguistic context, need, and future use of
the word which normally determine dictionary use.
It is also problematic to ensure that the stimulus
 Learner strategies
words are truly unknown to the learners. Cohen (1991) present a larger-scale multi-method
Dictionaries themselves differ in interesting ways, study which explores these issues carefully, isolating
perhaps on a dine of'learner friendliness'. This area those strategies used in tests which lead to success,
has been reviewed recently by Scholfield (1997). through discriminant analysis of items, scores, and
protocols.
Grorjahn (1987) and Feldman and Stemmer
Test-taking (1987) used protocol analysis to investigate empiri-
An activity that most learners of a foreign language cally what a new form of test, the C-test (a kind of
more or less voluntarily engage in is being tested: letter-deletion cloze), was actually measuring. Thus
offering their proficiency in the new language for verbal report methods were used in order to evaluate
measurement. It might be thought that in this area of a test's validity. In this type of test, most of the work is
language learning, at least, there is no need of infor- in fact devoted to word-finding rather than meaning
mation on learner strategies, since testing is by defin- construction. Cohen (1998: 216-237) reviews in
ition objective and dispassionate, and could not be detail related work in test validation. Buck (1991)
affected by person variables such as variation in strat- presents a think-aloud study of listening test perfor-
egy use. However, several studies have now shown mance, which revealed strategies concerned with
that how a learner approaches the set task makes a time-management, higher-order questions, response
considerable difference to both the validity of the set, and following a self-consistent line of interpreta-
task (in this context, the relationship of the test task tion through successive answers. A very recent retro-
to the skill nominally being tested as deployed in spection-based study of multiple-choice listening has
ordinary language use situations) and the reliability been reported byWu (1998), which noted strategies
of the test (since testees may differ in the degree of leading to successful answers and to comprehension
skill they have in coping with test formats indepen- breakdown, in particular strategies for compensating
dent of the language skills being tested). Cohen for missing linguistic knowledge items. Wu's retro-
(1984) began to open this area up for second lan- spective think-aloud methodology is interesting
guage learners with reports of small-scale studies of because it avoids the usual problem in investigating
cloze and multiple-choice test formats. An interest- test performance, that the results may not be charac-
ing study of multiple-choice reading by Dollerup, teristic of tests administered through normal, timed
Glahn, and Hansen (1982) drew a distinction procedures, as if the test really'counted'.
between mainline reading and fragmented reading:
reading directed by adherence to the main topic and
reading referenced to test questions. Nevo (1989) Strategies in the classroom
drew together a number of implications from these There have been several studies of students' evalua-
previous studies and compared 'contributory' strate- tions of classroom teaching procedures (Alcorso and
gies (those characteristic of normal reading) with Kalantzis; Eltis and Low; Nunan, all reported in
'non-contributory' strategies (those particularly Nunan, 1988; EFL Services, 1992;Maclennan, 1987).
designed for interpreting multiple-choice questions) There have also been proposals for introducing
in LI and L2, showing that learners employed non- explicit teaching of strategies into ordinary class-
contributory strategies nearly three times as often rooms, to be reviewed in a later section, some of
in L2 as in LI (though contributory strategies were which have already been mentioned. Highly intrigu-
the majority in both situations). McDonough (1995: ing problems arise when researchers consider what
113) compared Nevo's and Dollerup et a/.'s most learners are actually paying attention to and reacting
frequent strategies with a list of reading strategies to when they participate in classroom learning.
derived from the work reported under 'reading' Unfortunately this information is very difficult to
above. The picture of reading strategies emerging obtain. Oxford et al. (1990) presented a collection of
from the test situation is different both quantitatively descriptions of six classrooms in which various
and qualitatively from that emerging from studies of strategies were in use. Cohen (1992) investigated pat-
reading in non-test situations. Some of that differ- terns of attention in class using a 'stimulated recall'
ence is explicable in terms of variation in research video technique. Cohen and Hosenfeld (1983) used
method, in particular the smaller number of strate- a dramatic technique of stopping the class at selected
gies evident in the test situation; but the absence in moments and asking students to complete an atten-
those testing studies of 'technical aids' or 'monitor- tion focus questionnaire. Cohen also reports small-
ing' or 'coherence' detecting strategies implies scale studies of students coping with error feedback
strongly that this kind of reading test is tapping a spe- in class. Slimani (1989) used a comparison between
cialised set of operations (partly characterised by lesson transcript and 'uptake' record (what students
'test-wiseness') rather than what people normally could remember of a lesson immediately and three
do when reading in a foreign language, and thus hours afterwards) to infer what topics students paid
test validity (particularly construct validity) is attention to and who had raised them. She found
compromised. Anderson, Bachman, Perkins and that students paid far more attention to topics raised

11

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 Learner strategies
by fellow students than to those raised by the teach-
ers (although the latter were far more numerous).
The validity of the uptake measure was given partial
support by Ellis (1995). Oddly, the studies on pat-
terns of attention and uptake show differences: in the
first case, by and large students were found to tune
out other students' contributions; in the latter, they
became the major focus. This difference may be
related to culture, educational history, and proficien-
cy, and needs further research.
The language of thought
An interesting line of research refers to the use of
mental translation in performing language tasks.
With regard to explicit and intended translation
tasks, Krings (1983), Holscher and Mohle (1987) and
Gerloff (1987) investigated a variety of translation
tasks from L2 into LI, involving planning, interpret-
ing, word-finding, and production strategies for the
final native language version. These are interesting
studies in their own right, and for pointers they give
for the 'covert' use of translation while doing other
language tasks, including production in L2 talking
and writing. Mental translation is a frequently used
strategy for coping with many comprehension and
production tasks in the L2: it is therefore interesting
to find out what use L2 learners of different profi-
ciency levels make of the LI, and when. Sometimes
such use is programmatic and intended, as in
Friedlander's (1990) study of planning writing in the
language of knowledge acquisition. Sometimes
translation is avoided at great cost in accuracy and
speed. Cohen and Hawras (1996) report a study of
using translation in reading in an L2. Subjects used
mental translation as a comprehension strategy,
involving individual words and at other times sen-
tence frames: so translation served accuracy in word
identification and more global comprehension, but
not necessarily at the same time. Cohen (1998)
reports a study of the use of mental translation in
Spanish language immersion classes, of children per-
forming maths tasks. By and large he found that the
children were resorting to the native language to
perform the cognitive operations involved, but were
interpreting the task set and of course giving the
answers in the Spanish L2. Studies of 'thought-
switching' into and out of LI while performing in
L2 indicate some of the complications of operating
in two languages, and raise questions about the
nature of bilingual performance. Pedagogic implica-
tions centre on the dubiousness of banning LI from
L2 classrooms: perhaps calls for 'linguistic purity' in
L2 are simply flying in the face of reality. Put more
positively, studies of strategic use of mental transla-
tion underline some of the benefits of having two
languages available: becoming bilingual is actually
different from being two monolinguals in the same
head!
12
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4. Strategy instruction
McDonough (1995) draws a distinction between
descriptive studies of strategy use and strategy pro-
motion, and interventionist studies of programmes of
strategy instruction. By and large this corresponds to
a division of the many studies of the effects of teach-
ing people strategies as a way of teaching people to
learn - 'learner training' as between exploratory
studies and quasi-experimental studies. The majority
of the studies in the previous main section fall into
the class of descriptive studies. As the issues involved
have become clearer, so it has been possible to design
more complex studies dedicated to testing some of
the hypotheses arising out of the more exploratory
studies. Such issues include:
• the relation between strategy use and proficiency,
which the earlier part of this paper has shown to be
crucial;
• the double-edged relation between teaching people
to learn and learner autonomy;
• the definition of success in teaching people strate-
gies:
0 the use of particular strategies as taught,
0 increased proficiency attributable to greater
strategy use,
0 the adoption of a strategic approach involving
personal development of strategies, or
0 the use of increasingly more efficient and higher-
level strategies in place of less powerful ones.
A number of sets of language learning strategy train-
ing materials have been developed for classroom use,
based partly on general educational research and
partly on language learner research. Ellis and
Sinclair's (1989) book aims to raise awareness about
the task of language learning, to prepare the student
for participating in various kinds of learning activi-
ties, and to develop a personal language learning
approach. Willing (1989) produced a set of teaching
materials for teaching language learning strategies for
both specific and general applications. O'Malley and
Chamot (Chamot 1996) introduced a scheme for
learner training in normal language classes called the
Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach
(CALLA). Chamot (1996) reports a study of its
implementation with some evaluation of its success.
Wenden's (1991) book presents arguments for using
strategy training for developing learner autonomy
and the book contains many exercises and materials
for adopting the approach advocated. Weaver and
Cohen (1997) prepared a set of teacher training
materials for strategies-based instruction in 30-hour
and 15-hour formats, incorporating video referring
to its use for four different languages.
Empirical validation of strategic teaching has been
reported in small-scale and large-scale studies.
Wenden (1987) gave additional strategy training,
but found it was less successful than hoped, and
used mainly for extra language exposure by motivat-

ed learners. O'Malley and Chamot (1987, 1990)
report on two larger-scale studies of strategy train-
ing, on English as L2 and other languages, and one
other involving training the teachers as well, but
found in all three studies that the benefits were not
easy to detect. The gains that might be attributable to
strategy training might be difficult to detect because
they are very small, or because they are largely a
function of individual differences of proficiency or
approach, or because the quasi-experimental situa-
tion is neither sensitive enough nor sufficiently
extensive. A critical review of the field as it was then
was delivered by Rees-Miller (1993), which urged
caution on teachers considering implementing
learner training schemes recommending particular
kinds of strategy training. Interestingly, this review
sparked off defensive comment from protagonists in
the field in a later edition of TESOL Quarterly.
Nevertheless, there have been useful studies of strate-
gy training for particular skills, for example Kern
(1989) on reading, and Carrell, Pharis, and Liberto
(1989) on the use of meta-cognitive strategies in pre-
reading tasks.
Since McDonough's (1995) review, which was
discouraging, a number of better controlled inter-
ventionist evaluations of learner training schemes or
strategies-based instruction have appeared, and they
have begun to demonstrate the advantages of this
kind of language teaching approach. A number of
SILL and non-SILL based studies of strategy training
schemes around the world are reported in Oxford
(1996) (in particular the papers by Baily, Chamot and
O'Malley, Dadour and Robbins, Oxford and Leaver,
and Rubin). Larger-scale studies include Talbot's
(1997) evaluation of a reading strategy programme
and Nunan's (1997) empirical investigation of the
effectiveness of training in general language learning
strategies. Nunan's study, in particular, showed
encouraging results for the selection of learning
strategies with his Hong Kong student group.
Strategy training also increased motivation to learn
for this group, in the rather special context of the
run-up to the handover of Hong Kong to the
People's Republic
Dornyei (1995) investigated the teachability of
communication strategies through focused instruc-
tion. His results, though mixed, show that it is possi-
ble to train students to use certain communicative
strategies effectively, and that this affects their fluency
positively (for instance, less fluent learners were able
to use time-gainingfillersand thus became more flu-
ent, at least on a simple conception of fluency).
The largest controlled study to date is Cohen,
Weaver and Li's study (1996), reported with more
detailed discussion in Cohen (1998: 114-156). This
study used the thirty-hour course in strategies-based
instruction (Weaver and Cohen, 1997) for training
the teachers, who were teaching French and
Norwegian classes. The study concentrated on three
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Learner strategies
speaking tasks: self-description, story retelling, and
city description. Students completed the SILL and
gave evidence in the form of think-aloud protocols.
The study compared, in a quasi-experimental design,
an Experimental group, who received the strategies-
based instruction, and a Comparison group who did
not. There was thus control of input and a direct link
between treatment, with or without strategy instruc-
tion, and specific language tasks. While the results do
not go all the Experimental group's way, the study
provides a firm basis for the claim that strategy-based
instruction makes a measurable difference in both
how students perform (that is, their performance
strategies and modes of action) and in how well they
perform (that is, the quality of their performance of
the set tasks).
5. Conclusion
The state of the art in research into language learner
strategies is patently that there is a great deal of seri-
ous interest in the subject, producing a mass of high
quality research. As research methods have been
developed and research designs more refined in this
area, so learner strategies are being revealed in more
and more areas of language learning.
A first conclusion is that there are certain areas of
strategy use which are of wide applicability, and in a
sense more essential than others. One is word-finding
and word-identification. Learners who have devel-
oped good skills in this area will need to use them in
most example of language use and language tasks -
writing, reading, production tasks, tests. Another is
coherence detection and higher-order strategies of
this sort, which can be applied as we have seen to
many language use situations. Monitoring and other
self-evaluation strategies contribute heavily to the
ability to be an autonomous learner.
A second conclusion is also patent, which is that
teaching strategies is not universally successful, but
the latest research is showing that, in certain circum-
stances and modes, particularly when incorporated
into the teacher's normal classroom behaviour, and
thus involving teacher training as well as learner
training, success is demonstrable.
A third conclusion has to be that many questions
remain unanswered. We do not have an adequate
theory of strategic behaviour to which all the results
can be related. The relationship between strategy use
and proficiency is very complicated: issues such as
frequency and quality of strategy use do not bear a
simple linear relationship to achievement in a second
language. The role of strategies as an explanation of
learning contrasts with the conception of strategies
as an aid to learning. It is tempting but not entirely
justified to see the difference between skilled and
unskilled language learners in terms of the strategy
repertoire, choices, and creative development the
former have available and do activate.
13
 Learner strategies
The strategy training issue and its relationship to
developing learner autonomy (or to regimented pro-
cedures) is live, and some of the most interesting
work is in this area.
With the development of sensitive research meth-
ods, and the invasion of the concept of strategy into
so many areas of second language learner activity,
there are many opportunities and even greater need
for rigorous research. The point has already been
made that work on strategies is hampered by the lack
of a coherent theory of how strategies work, how
they are selected, invented, and discarded in favour of
better ones, how they relate to enlarging the individ-
ual's linguistic repertoire, and how they relate to
what s/he can already do in the first language. So,
there is urgent need for theoretical research to devel-
op precision in our conception of strategies and pro-
vide an umbrella to cover the variety of work
reported above. Further, there are a host of issues
which arise in each of the skill areas which need
exploring-the relationship to proficiency, the gener-
ality of strategies across skill areas, the fate of different
kinds of strategies in different learners, and the rela-
tionship between strategies for accomplishing one
kind of skill in ordinary life and accomplishing the
same skill in a test situation where you are supposed
to be demonstrating that you can perform the skill.
At the most basic level, there is a mass of work on
reading and writing, but far less on 'natural' vocabu-
lary learning, listening, and talking strategies. There
are also very few comparative studies—looking at
what people do in one skill area and comparing that
with what they do in others.
More generally, there is a need to flesh out the
concept of the 'skilled learner* and to answer basic
questions such as whether a skilled learner has a bet-
ter set of strategies, or greater flexibility in applying
and discarding strategies according to whether they
work for him/her, or a strongly developed monitor-
ing sense giving the skilled learner a head start in
selecting strategies of maximal generality. Exactly
how a skilled learner of a language corresponds to an
autonomous learner needs investigation-it is after all
possible to be autonomous and make a disastrous
sequence of learning decisions.
Clearly research in the evaluation of training pro-
grammes has opened up and one might almost say
come of age in the last few years, but that has merely
served to open up further interesting problems for
analysis, perhaps by different means.
Considerable research ingenuity is going to be
required to tackle these problems, and no doubt the
state of the art in another ten years will look very
different to this current picture.
The main justifications for work in this whole area
remain as expressed many years ago by Brown's
remark (quoted by Nisbet and Shucksmith, 1986) that
learners,forsome reason, actually do much less than
they can do, and by Hosenfeld's (1976:128) remark
14
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that 'Too often our focus has been on what students
should be doing; we must begin by asking what stu-
dents are doing'.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful for the help of the Editor and of an
anonymous Language Teaching reviewer for support in
planning this review and for drawing my attention to
work in the field which I had missed.
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