STRATEGIES

SKILLS VS. STRATEGIES

•  Skills
•  Linguistic processing abilities that are relatively automatic in their use and their
combinations
•  Automatized processes in word recognition (e.g., phonological processing, orthographic
processing, lexical access); syntactic parsing; semantic proposition formation etc.
•  Initially learned through active attention and conscious processing. With repeated input
and practice, skills are proceduralized and automatized.
•  E.g. driving a car; riding a bike; decoding
•  Strategies
•  Processes that are consciously controlled by readers to solve reading problems
•  Some reading strategies are used in a nonconcious way.
•  E.g., word-analysis strategies to guess the meaning of words from context; menatally
summarizing a text; evaluating the text or the author.
•  Skills and strategies are not obviously distinct in many reading situations.
 READING
Grabe (2009): Chapter 11. (Required)
 SAMPLE READING STRATEGIES
• Specifying a purpose for reading •  Guessing the meaning of a new word from context
• Planning what to do/what steps to take
•  Using discourse markers to see relationships
Previewing the text
•  Checking comprehension
• Predicting the contents of the text or section of text

• Checking predictions •  Identifying difficulties

• Posing questions about the text •  Taking steps to repair faulty comprehension
• Finding answers to posed questions
•  Critiquing the author
• Connecting text to background knowledge
•  Critiquing the text
• Summarising information

• Making inferences •  Judging how well purposes for reading were met
• Connecting one part of the text to another
•  Reflecting on what has been learned from the text
• Paying attention to text structure

• Rereading
EFFECTIVE READING COMPREHENSION
STRATEGIES IN L1
•  Summarizing
•  L1 readers recall more information from text as a result of summarizing.
•  Forming questions
•  Generating questions about the text improves text recall and the identification of
main ideas.
•  Answering questions and elaborative interrogation
•  Answering questions after reading significantly improves comprehension.
•  Activating relevant background knowledge
•  Monitoring comprehension
•  See Grabe (2009), Table 10.4 for a list of comprehension monitoring strategies (p.
211).
EFFECTIVE READING COMPREHENSION
STRATEGIES IN L1
•  Using text structure awareness
•  Students who are knowledgeable about text structure and who make use of text
structure resources in their recalls and summaries have demonstrated better text
comprehension and learning from texts.
•  See Grabe (2009), Table 10.5 for a list of text structure signaling systems (p. 212).
•  Using graphic organizers
•  Graphic representations to organize text information such as venn diagrams,
flowcharts etc. combines text structure awareness, main idea recognition, and
imagery.
•  Inferencing
•  Appropriate inferencing depends on prior knowledge, vocabulary knowledge, text-
structure awareness, comprehension monitoring.
METACOGNITION
Metacognitive awareness Metacognitive regulation/control
•  what we know •  what we can do

•  Learning strategies that support our •  How to carry out strategies effectively
comprehension
•  Awareness of strategies •  Control of strategies; knowing when, where, and
how to use strategies

•  Metacognition: The knowledge and control we have over our cognitive processes.
•  Metacognitive strategies are not necessarily different from cognitive strategies. It refers to
what we know about our cognitive strategies and how to use them.
•  Planning, monitoring, evaluating, and repairing require metacognitive processing
METALINGUISTIC AWARENESS
•  a subset of metacognition that deals with linguistic knowledge
•  The ability to reflect upon language knowledge and to be able to manipulate that
knowledge consciously at phonological, orthographic, morphological, lexical, syntactic,
semantic, discourse, pragmatic levels
•  Awareness of word-learning skills (e.g., using context, using word part information,
and building new definitions)
•  Awareness of syntactic structuring (e.g., recognizing syntactic categories for new
words, using syntactic information as context information, enhancing fluency,
disambiguating lexical meanings and discourse organization)
•  Awareness of discourse organization (recognizing genre clues, determining main
ideas, recognizing discourse patterns in text)
STRATEGIC READER
•  A strategic reader automatically and routinely applies combinations of effective and appropriate
strategies depending on reading goals, reading tasks, processing abilities.
•  Strategic readers know when, how, and why to use strategies effectively and recognize
appropriate contexts for using effective strategies.
•  Strategic readers:
•  are actively engaged in reading,
•  read far more extensively,
•  have the motivation to read for longer periods of time,
•  use reading to seek out information relevant to their needs and interests,
•  build efficiency and automaticity in strategy use for routine situations they commonly
encounter,
•  have high levels of metacognitive and metalinguistic awareness that they can use when
needed,
•  use appropriate combinations of strategies to deal with difficult and challenging texts,
•  have the linguistic resources, fluencies, and practice to become skilled strategic readers.
RESEARCH FINDINGS
 LISTENING
Flowerdew & Miller (2005): pp. 69-81. (Required)
EFFECTIVE VS. INEFFECTIVE LISTERNERS
•  Effective listeners use both top-down and bottom-up approaches.
•  Ineffective listeners use only a bottom-up approach to comprehend.
•  Effective and ineffective listeners differ in three main ways: perceptual processing, parsing, and
utilization.
•  Perceptual processing. Effective listeners are aware of when they stop attending and try to
redirect their attention to the text. Ineffective listeners are often put off by the length of the
text and by the number of unknown words they encounter. When they stop attending
because of these factors, they do little to redirect their attention to the text.
•  Parsing. Effective listeners usually attend to larger chunks (or parsing) of information and
only attend to individual words when there is some message breakdown. They utilize
intonation and pauses and listen for phrases or sentences. Ineffective listeners tend to
focus more on a word-by-word level – a bottom-up strategy.
•  Utilization. Effective listeners use world knowledge, personal knowledge, and self-
questioning as a way of attending to the message. Ineffective listeners use these
elaboration techniques less. Whereas effective listeners can be described as actively
participating in the listening process, ineffective listeners are more passive.
METACOGNITIVE STRATEGIES
METACOGNITIVE STRATEGIES
COGNITIVE STRATEGIES
COGNITIVE STRATEGIES
COGNITIVE STRATEGIES
COGNITIVE STRATEGIES
SOCIO-AFFECTIVE STRATEGIES
 WRITING
Sasaki, M. (2000). Toward an Empirical Model of EFL Writing Processes: An
Exploratory Study. Journal of Second Language Writing, 9, 259-291. (Recommended)
Riazi, A. (1997). Acquiring disciplinary literacy: A social-cognitive analysis of text
production and learning among Iranian graduate students of education. Journal of
Second Language Writing, 6, 105-137. (Recommended)
WRITING STRATEGIES
 EXPERT WRITERS VS. NOVICE WRITERS
•  The experts write longer texts with more complex development at greater speed than the
novices.
•  The experts spend a longer time before starting to write, planning a detailed overall
organization, whereas the novices spend a shorter time making a less detailed plan.
•  Once the experts make their global plan, they do not stop and think while writing as frequently
as the novices. In contrast, the novices tend to stop and plan what they were going to write
every time they finish writing one semantically coherent chunk.
•  L2 proficiency or lack of it appears to explain part of the difference in strategy use between the
experts and the novices. The novices often stop to translate the generated ideas into English
whereas the experts often stop to refine their English expression. After 6 months (two
semesters) of process writing instruction, neither the quality of the students' compositions nor
their writing fluency appear to have improved. Their relatively low L2 proficiency still
constrained their writing speed: They still had to stop to translate often. Although the number
of strategies they used decreased by half for some reason, some of the students started to
use skilled writers' strategies such as ``rereading’’ and ``global planning.’’
 COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES

Bygate, M. (1991). Speaking. Oxford University Press (pp. 42-48). (Required)

STRATEGIES LEARNERS USE TO COPE WITH
COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS
STRATEGIES LEARNERS USE TO COPE WITH
COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS