OVERVIEW OF THE SUBJECT
STYLES AND STRATEGIES
Universal human traits in learning are mainly the source of theories of learning, Gagné’s types of learning, intelligence models and some other isuues. These kinds of specific issues actually try to find an answer to how people generally perceive, filter, store and recall information. This learning process is actually differs from individual to individual. It is entirely true that we have the same process learning because of this is in human nature. However, all of us have a unique way of approaching a problem or learning something with some combinations. We will mention about these kinds of cognitive variations while learning a second language.
Process, Style and Strategy
The terms taking place above belong to the literature on second language acquisition. Let’s have a look at these terms.
Process is the most general one of these three terms. While learning, the process occurs in the same way in all human beings like all need some basic things for surviving. All human beings make stimulus-response connections and are driven by reinforcement. They are all in the situation of association, storage, transfer, generalization. Every person has a specific verbal learning process. As a result, process is a characteristic of human nature.
Style is more dealt with tendencies and preferences within an individual. We can say that style is a brief reflection of individual itself because it is a general characteristic of intellectual functioning that indicate every individual is different from others. An individual can be auditory oriented and learn more effectively by listening.
Strategies are some specific methods to find a solution to a problem or achieving a particular end and some ways to control amnd keep in mind the information. Strategies are contextualizes “battle plans” that might vary from moment to moment, from one situation to another even from one culture to another. There are always some options for solving a problem and each individual choose one of them which is suitable for him/her most.
| VISUAL | Students with this strength can easily: | Enjoy/learn best by: | Learn to read best with: |
| | Recall what they see
Follow written or drawn instructions
Learn by observing | Using computer graphics;
performing visual puzzles;
looking at or designing
maps, charts, graphs | Sight methods, dissimilar
words, silent reading,
words accompanied by pictures, slides or videos |
| AUDITORY | Students with this strength can easily: | Enjoy/learn best by: | Learn to read best with: |
| | Recall what they hear
Follow spoken instructions
Learn by listening and
speaking | Talking, interviewing,
debating, participating
on a panel, asking and
answering questions,
memorizing, making oral reports | Phonics, choral reading,
by listening to stories
and recordings of
books, discussing stories,
reading orally |
| TACTILE | Students with this strength can easily: | Enjoy/learn best by: | Learn to read best with: |
| | Recall what they touch
Follow instructions they
write or touch
Learn by touching or
manipulating objects | Doodling, sketching, playing
board games, building
models, constructing
dioramas and relief maps
writing, tracing | Writing/tracing methods,
playing games or reading
instructions, then making something |
| KINESTHETIC | Students with this strength can easily: | Enjoy/learn best by: | Learn to read best with: |
| | Recall their experiences
Follow instructions that
they perform or rehearse
Learn by touching or
manipulating objects | Playing floor games,
assembling objects,
building models, participating
in fairs, setting up experiments,
acting, role-playing, scavenger
hunts | Pantomiming, acting in plays,
riding a stationary bike
while listening to a book,
recording and reading,
reading instructions and
then building/doing
something |
| GLOBAL | Students with this strength can easily: | Enjoy/learn best by: | Learn to read best with: |
| | Make decisions based on
emotions/intuition
Are spontaneous
Focus on creativity
Care less about tidiness | Information presented in
an interesting or humorous
story, examples, interesting
materials, group work,
and activities | Holistic reading methods,
such as recorded books,
story writing, choral
reading with books, computer
software, audiovisual materials, projects
and games |
| ANALYTIC | Students with this strength can easily: | Enjoy/learn best by: | Learn to read best with: |
| | Make decisions based on
logic/common sense
Plan and organize well
Focus on details and facts
Like a tidy environment | Information presented in
sequential steps, with rules
and examples, structure
materials, teacher-directed
lessons, clear goals and
requirements | Phonics (if auditory),
programmed materials, puzzles,
some worksheets-reinforced
by strategies appropriate for
global learners |
Learning styles
There is a strange but not so shaped link between how we learn things in general, the way we attack problems and personality and cognition. This link is called as cognitive style. These cognitive styles are called as learning styles when these styles are specified to a situation dealt with education and psychology.
It can be briefly said that learning styles may be “cognitive, psychological traits that are more stable indicators of how learners perceive, interact with, and respond to the learning environment.”(Keefe,1979,p.4) In the tasks in second language learning, learners have so many affective factors and those styles have an importance for the construction of a unified theory of second language acquisition.
Actually learning style is extremely related to emotion and cognition. For example, a reflective style appears in a reflective mood or from a reflective person. People’s styles are formed by internalizing the total environment. The internalizing process is not so entirely cognitive, it is united with physical, affective and cognitive domains and it becomes learning process. It can be seen like everyone has generally same or similar tendencies to some styles but in fact, the styles change according to the context. These different styles even take place in the same individual’s mind in different times.
If all the styles identified were written, there would be a very long list. However, we will share some of main styles identified by Ausubel and Hill. These are some of the main styles for second language learning:
· Field independence-dependence
· Random vs. sequential
· Global vs. particular
· Inductive vs. deductive
· Synthetic vs. analytic
· Analogue vs. digital
· Concrete vs. abstract
· Leveling vs. sharpening
· Impulsive vs. reflective
Field Independence
There was a kind of enjoyable activity when we were children. A picture in
which some flowers and trees were used to be given to us and we were asked to find the monkeys in the picture. When we searched carefully, we were able to find those monkeys between flowers and trees. This actually provides children to find the relevant things among the some irrelevant things. In other words this is to find useful ones in a field of distracting items. On the other hand, field dependence is to see the whole instead of the useful or useless parts. The whole is seen more clearly than the small parts. Field sensitivity is the synonym of field dependence.
These two terms have very striking benefits for us. Field independent provides us to distinguish the useful parts in the whole. (E.g. reading a book in a noisy train station.) However, the amount of field independence can cause to some unwanted events. You can see the small parts in the whole but you cannot find out the relevance of those small parts with the whole. It is called as tunnel vision. In this stage, field dependence starts to work. It provides us to make a judgment about the whole. As a result, these two terms are a part of one another which completes each other, even though they are opposite.
According to researches, field independent rises from childhood to adulthood and the individual becomes more dominant while field independent-dependent is more stable in adulthood. Some researchers found in Western countries that males are more dealt with field independence there. They are busier with analytic factor instead of verbal comprehension and attention concentration. This using field independence-dependence also changes from culture to culture. For example, Authoritarian or agrarian cultures societies, which are usually highly socialized and utilize strict rearing, practices, tend to produce more field dependence.
Of course there are some personality differences between people using field dependence and independence. Field independent people are more self-confident, competitive and independent. On the other hand, field dependent people are more empathic.
We mentioned about field dependence and independence so much. However, what do they mean to learn a second language? There are two opposite hypothesis about this issue. One of them says that field independence is closely related to learning in classroom in terms of analysis, attention and some other focusing activities. Some researches such as Nalman, Stern and Todesco found out that students who were learning French used field independent and make a very good progress.
Lots of researches have been made about this issue. Abraham found out that second language earners who were field independent performed were better in deductive lessons while those who were field dependent performed were better in inductive lessons. Another conflicting hypothesis is that field dependent style provides empathy, outreach and perception of other people.
Classroom Connections Research Findings: Early research on FI reported several kinds of tests of FI, including a test called the Rod and Frame Test. In this procedure, test takers step into a completely dark cubicle. Their task is to manipulate an illuminate rod within an illuminated rectangular frame. As the frame appears at various angles, they must position the rod in what they feel is a “straight up and down” position, irrespective of the various positions of the frame. FI is the extent to which the test taker can place the rod correctly without being influenced by the frame. Teaching Implications: Obviously, classrooms cannot be equipped with elaborate Rod and Frame devices, nor with the supplies necessary for the standard Group Embedded Figure Test. If the FID continuum is to be useful, perhaps classroom language teachers are better served by following their intuition concerning students FID and acting to raise students’ awareness of their styles and their strengths and weaknesses. How have you (if you have taught) helped your students to become aware of styles? As a student, how has your teacher helped to make you aware of them? |
The two hypotheses could be seen as paradoxical: how could FD be most important on the one hand and FI equally important? The answer to the paradox would appear to be that clearly both styles are important. The two hypotheses 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. It is more likely that “natural” language learning in the “field”, beyond the constraints of the classroom, is aided by a FD style, and the classroom type of learning is enhanced, conversely, a FI style.
There is some research to support such a conclusion. Some pilot studies of FID (Brown, 1977a) indicated that FI correlated negatively with informal oral interviews of adult English learners in the United States. And so it would appear that FID might provide one construct that differentiates “classroom” (tutored) second language learning from “natural” (untutored) second language learning.
FID may also prove to be a valuable tool for differentiating child and adult language acquisition. Stephen Krashen (1977) has suggested that adults use more “monitoring”, or “learning”, strategies for language acquisition, while children utilize strategies of “acquisition”. This distinction between acquisition and learning could well be explicated by the FID dichotomy.
FID, like all types, appears to be contextualized and variable (Skehan, 1998). FID is quite variable in one person. Depending upon the context of learning, individual learners can vary their utilization of FI or FD.
Some learners might be both highly FI and highly FD as contexts vary. Such variability is not without its parallels in almost every other psychological construct. A generally extroverted person might, for example, be relatively introverted given certain contexts; or a preference for visual processing would not preclude the possibility of invoking auditory processors when deemed necessary. In second language learning, then, it may be incorrect to assume that learners should be either FI or FD.
Left- and Right-Brain Dominance
Left- and right-brain dominance is a potentially significant issue in developing a theory of second language acquisition. The left hemisphere is associated with logical, analytical thought, with mathematical and linear processing of information. The right hemisphere perceives and remembers visual, tactile, and auditory images; it is more efficient in processing holistic, integrative, and emotional information.
Table 1: Left- and right-brain characteristics (adapted from Torrance, 1980)
Left-Brain Dominance | Right-Brain Dominance |
Intellectual | Intuitive |
Remember names | Remember faces |
Responds to verbal instructions and explanations | Responds to demonstrated, illustrated, or symbolic instructions |
Experiments systematically and with control | Experiments randomly and with less restraint |
Makes objective judgments | Makes subjective judgments |
Planned and structured | Fluid and spontaneous |
Prefers established, certain information | Prefers elusive, uncertain information |
Analytic reader | Synthesizing reader |
Reliance on language in thinking and remembering | Reliance on images in thinking and remembering |
Prefers talking and writing | Prefers drawing and manipulating objects |
Prefers multiple-choice tests | Prefers open-ended questions |
Controls feelings | More free with feelings |
Not good at interpreting body language | Good at interpreting body language |
Rarely uses metaphors | Frequently uses metaphors |
Favours logical problem solving | Favours intuitive problem solving |
While we can cite many differences between left- and right-brain characteristics, it is important to remember that the left and right hemispheres operate together as a “team”. Through thecorpus collosum,mesaages are sent back and forth so that both hemispheres are involved in much of the neurological activity of the human brain. Most problem solving involves the capacities of both hemispheres, and often the best solutions to problems are those in which each hemisphere has participated optimally (Danesi, 1988).
The left-/right-brain construct helps to define another useful learning style continuum, with implications for second language learning and teaching. Danesi (1988), for example, used “neurological bimodality” to analyze the way in the language classroom. Krashen, Seliger, and Hartnett (1974) found support for the hypothesis that left-brain-dominant second language learners preferred a deductive style of teaching, while right-brain-dominant learners appeared to be more successful in an inductive classroom environment, Stevick (1982) concluded that left-brain-dominant second language learners are better at producing separate words, gathering the specifics of language, carrying out sequences of operations, and dealing with abstraction, classification, labelling and reorganization. Right-brain-dominant learners, on the other hand, appear to deal better with whole images (not with reshuffling parts), with generalizations, with metaphors, and with emotional reactions and artistic expressions.
You may be asking yourself how left- and right-brain functioning differs from FI and FD. While few studies have set out explicitly to correlate the two factors, intuitive observation of learners and conclusions from studies of both hemispheric preference and FI show a strong relationship. Thus, in dealing with either type of cognitive style, we are dealing with two styles that are highly parallel. Conclusions that were drawn above for FI and FD generally apply well for left- and right-brain functioning, respectively.
Ambiguity Tolerance
Some people are relatively open-minded in accepting ideologies and events and facts that contradict their own view; they are ambiguity tolerant, that is, more content than others to entertain and even internalize contradictory propositions. Others, more closed-minded and dogmatic, tend to reject items that are contradictory or slightly incongruent with their existing system; in their ambiguity tolerance, they wish to see every proposition fit into an acceptable place in their cognitive organization, and if it does not fit, it is rejected.
Advantages and disadvantages are presented in each style. The person who is tolerant of ambiguity is free to entertain a number of innovative and creative possibilities and not be cognitively or affectively disturbed by ambiguity and uncertainty. In second language learning a great amount of apparently contradictory information is encountered: 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 the native culture. Successful language learning necessitates tolerance of such ambiguities, at least for interim periods or stages, during which time ambiguous items are given a chance to become resolved. On the other hand, too much tolerance of ambiguity can have a detrimental effect. People can become “wishy-washy,” accepting virtually every proposition before them, not efficiently subsuming necessary facts into their cognitive organizational structure. Such excess tolerance has the effect of hampering or preventing meaningful subsumption of ideas. Linguistic rules, for example, might not be effectively integrated into a whole system; rather, they may be gulped down in meaningless chunks learned by rote.
Intolerance of ambiguity also has its advantages and disadvantages. Certain intolerance at an optimal level enables one to guard against the wishy-washiness referred to above, to close off avenues of hopeless possibilities, to reject entirely contradictory material, and to deal with the reality of the system that one has built. But intolerance can close the mind too soon, especially if ambiguity is perceived as a threat; the result is a rigid, dogmatic, brittle mind that is too narrow to be creative. This may be particularly harmful in second language learning.
Reflectivity and Impulsivity
It is common for us to show in our personalities certain tendencies toward reflectivity sometimes and impulsivity at other times. Psychological studies have been conducted to determine the degree to which, in the cognitive domain, a person tends to make either a quick or gambling (impulsive) guess at an answer to a problem or a slower, and more calculated (reflective) decision.
The implications for language acquisition are numerous. It has been found that children who are conceptually reflective tend to make fewer errors in reading than impulsive children (Kagan, 1965); however, impulsive persons are usually faster readers, and eventually master the “psycholinguistic guessing game” (Goodman, 1970) of reading so that their impulsive style of reading may not necessarily deter comprehension.
A few studies have related R/I to second language learning. Jamieson (1992) reported on a study of ESL learners:
CLASSROOM CONNECTIONS |
Research Findings: Joan Jamieson’s (1992) study of FID and reflectivity showed that the R/I style (slow and fast problem solving/responding styles) alone did not account for success on the TOEFL. She discovered that some students were fast and inaccurate, and concluded that the combination of speed andaccuracy led to success on timed, standardized tests. |
Teaching Implications: Time is a more important factor in language success than you might at first think. All classroom contexts require students to work under timed conditions: Tests, reading, writing (composing), responding to listening and speaking fluently are all subject to time constraints. |
R/I has some important considerations for classroom second language learning and teaching. Teachers tend to judge mistakes too harshly, especially in the case of a learner with an impulsive style who may be more willing than a reflective person to gamble at an answer. On the other hand, a reflective person may require patience from the teacher, who must allow more time for the student to struggle with responses.
Visual, Auditory, and Kinaesthetic Styles
Visual learners tend to prefer reading and studying charts, drawings, and other graphic information. Auditory learners prefer listening to lectures and audiotapes. And kinaestheticlearners will show a preference for demonstrations and physical activity involving bodily movement.
In one study of adult learners of ESL, Joy Reld (1987) found some significant cross-cultural differences in visual and auditory styles. By means of a self-reporting questionnaire, the subjects rated their own preferences. The students rated statements like “When I read instructions, I learn them better” and “I learn more when I make drawings as I study” on a five-point scale ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”.
Research findings on learning styles underscore the importance of recognizing learners’ varying preferences. However, teachers must take a cautious approach because measurement of style preferences (usually by means of self-check questionnaires) is problematic (Ehrman&Leaver, 2003). The fact that learners’ styles represent preferred approaches rather than immutable stable traits means that learners can adapt to varying contexts and situations. And styles can be a reflection if not a direct product of one’s cultural background (Wintergerst, DeCapua, & Itzen, 2001; Oxford & Anderson, 1995), which spurs teachers to be sensitive to students’ heritage languages and cultures in the process of engaging in classroom activities. These caveats, notwithstanding, research on learning styles prods teachers to help students first of all to take charge of their language learning process-to become autonomous learners, and then to become aware of their styles, preferences, strengths, and weaknesses, and finally to take appropriate action on their second language learning challenges.
Autonomy Awareness and Action
In learning a second language, there are three linked concepts: autonomy, awareness and action. With emphasis on learner centered language, these three concepts have gained importance.
Until some of the methods of 1970s, most of the language teaching methods were teacher centered. Teacher was the authority in the class; students had to obey the instructions of the teacher. Some of the techniques used in the class were translation, memorization and repetition. However, the profession found out the importance of learner autonomy. It means allowing learners to do things like initiate oral production, solve problems in small groups, practice language forms in pairs and practice the language outside of the class.
The process of developing within learners a sense of autonomy required the use of strategies, as aptly demonstrated by Wenden (1992). Language programs and courses give importance to students’ self starting and taking responsibility for one’s own learning.
Learners’ becoming aware of their own process of learning is also as important as concept of autonomy. It was difficult for learners to become aware of what language learning was all about and what they could do to become better learners until recent years. Thanks to a lot of research on awareness and consciousness rising, language teaching programs offer opportunities for learners to develop awareness of their learning. For this issue a new journal called Language Awareness has been developed. There are a lot of studies done in this concept. For example Lightbown and Spada (2000) showed that English learners in Quebec showed no awareness of their own intuitions about language learning and suggested further attempts to help students increase awareness. With such kind of studies, learners can improve awareness of their own process of learning.
Only “awareness” is not useful for the language learning process. Action should also be taken into consideration. First of all awareness should be realized, and then action comes. Once learners can become aware of their predisposition, their styles, their strengths and weakness, they can take appropriate action. Because not all strategies are appropriate for all learners.
Strategies
While styles are general characteristics that are unique for one individual, strategies are specific attacks that we make on a given problem and that change form one individual to another. Strategies are used to solve problems that are encountered in second language learning process. Chamot (2005, p. 112) defines strategies as “procedures that facilitate a learning task…Strategies are most often conscious and goal driven.” There are two types of strategies in second language learning: learning strategies and communication strategies. Learning strategies relate to input to processing, storage, retrieval, taking in messages from others. Communication strategies are related to how we productively express meaning, how we deliver messages to others. Second language acquisition gain importance in the 1970s and researchers have studied on this subject. Rubin and Stern described the characteristics of good learners in second language learning. Good language learners:
1. Find their own way, taking charge of their learning
2. Organize information about language
3. Are creative developing a feel for the language by experimenting with its grammar and words.
4. Make their own opportunities for practice in using the language inside and outside of the classroom.
5. Learn to live with uncertainty by not getting flustered and by continuing to talk or listen without understanding every word.
6. Use mnemonics and other memory strategies to recall what has been learned.
7. Make errors work for them and not against them.
8. Use linguistic knowledge, including knowledge of their first language, in learning a second language
9. Use contextual cues to help them in comprehension.
10. Learn to make intelligent guesses
11. Learn chunks of language as wholes and formalized routines to help them perform beyond their competence
12. Learn certain tricks that help to keep conversations going
13. Learn certain production strategies to fill in gaps in their own competence
14. Learn different styles of speech and writing to learn to vary their language according to the formality of the situation.
Learning Strategies
The strategies are divided into three categories:
· Metacognitive: strategies that involve planning for learning, thinking about the learning process as it is taking place, monitoring one’s production or comprehension and evaluating learning after activity is completed. ( Purpura 1997)
· Cognitive: strategies that are related to specific learning tasks and involve more direct manipulation of the learning material itself.
· Socioaffective: strategies that require interaction with others
Learning Strategy | Description |
Metacognitive |
|
Advance organizers | Making a general but comprehensive preview of the organizing concept or principle in an anticipated learning activity |
Directed attention | Deciding in advance to attend in general to a learning task and to ignore irrelevant distractors |
Selective attention | Deciding in advance to attend to specific aspects of language input or situational details that will cue the retention of language input |
Self management | Understanding the conditions that help one learn and arranging for the presence of those conditions. |
Functional planning | Planning for and rehearsing linguistic components necessary to carry out an upcoming language task |
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 |
Delayed production | Consciously deciding to postpone seeking in order to learn initially through listening comprehension |
Self evaluation | Checking the outcomes of one’s own language learning against an international measure of completeness and accuracy |
Learning Strategy | Description |
Socioaffective |
|
Cooperation | Working with one or more peers to obtain feedback, pool information, or model a language |
Question for clarification | Asking a teacher or other native speaker for repetition, paraphrasing, explanation, and examples |
Learning Strategy | Description |
Cognitive |
|
Repetition | Imitating a language model, including overt practice and silent rehearsal |
Resourcing | Using target language reference materials |
Translation | Using the first language as a base for understanding and/or producing the second language |
Grouping | Reordering or reclassifying and perhaps labeling the material to be learned based on common attributes |
Note taking | Writing down the main idea, important points, outline or the summary of information presented orally or in writing |
Deduction | Consciously applying rules to produce or understand the second language |
Recombination | Constructing a meaningful sentence or larger language sequence by combining known elements in a new way |
Imagery | Relating new information to visual concepts in memory via familiar, easily retrievable visualizations, phrases, or locations |
Auditory representations | Retention of the sound or a similar sound for a word, phrase or longer language sequence |
Keyword | Remembering a new word in the second language by identifying a familiar word in the first language that sounds like or otherwise resembles the new word and generating easily recalled images of some relationship between the new and familiar word |
Contextualization | Placing a word or phrase in a meaningful language sequence |
Elaboration | Relating new information to other concepts in memory |
Transfer | Using previously acquired linguistic and conceptual knowledge to facilitate a new language learning task |
Inferencing | Using available information to guess the meanings of new items, predict outcomes or fill in missing information |
In more recent years, strategy research has been evolving a theory of language learning strategies.Many studies has been carried out on the effectiveness of learners’ using a variety of strategies in their quest for language competence. One way of classifying such work is through the four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Strategies such as selective attention to keywords and advance organizers, inferring from context, prediction, using a worksheet, and taking notes have been shown to be succesfully teachable.Reading strategies such as bottom-up and top-down processing, predicting, guessing from context, brainstorming, and summarizing, have been shown in other studies to be effectively taught.
Gender has been shown to be a significant variable in strategy use. Bacon’s (1922) study showed that men and women used listening strategies differently. Maubach and Morgan (2001) reported that among high school learners of French and German, males engaged in more risk-taking and spontaneous speaking strategies while females use organizational strategies in written work more effectively.
Two major forms of strategy use have been documented: classroom-based or text-book-embedded training, now called strategies-based instruction (SBI), and autonomous self-help training.
COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES
Avoidance Strategies
- Message abandonment: Leaving a message unfinished because of language difficulties
- Topic avoidance: Avoiding topic areas or concepts that pose language difficulties.
Compensatory Strategies
3 Circumlocution: Describing or exemplifying the target object of action
4. Approximation: Using an alternative term which expresses the meaning of the target lexical item as closely as possible (ship for sailboat)
5. Use of all purpose words: ( what do you call it?)
6.Word coinage: Creating a nonexisting L2 word based on supposed rule (e.g vegetarianist for vegetarian)
7.Prefabricated patterns: Using memorized stock phrases, usually for survival purposes
8. Nonlinguistic signals: Mime,gesture,facial expressions or sound imitation
9. Literal translation: Translating literary a lexical item, idiom, compound word, or structure from L1 to L2
10. Foreignizing: Using a L1 word by adjusting it to L2 phonology (with a L2 pronunciation) or morphology ( adding to it a L2 suffix)
11. Code-switching: Using a L1 word with L1 pronuncation or a L3 word with L3 pronunciation while speaking L2
12. Appeal for help: Asking for aid from the in
terlocutor either directly (e.g. What do you call ...?) or indirectly (e.g. rising intonation, pause, eye contact)
13. Stalling or time-gaining strategies: Using fillers or hesitation devices to fill pauses and to gain time to think ( e.g. well, now let’s see, uh)
DIRECT STRATEGIES: MEMORY, COGNITIVE, and COMPENSATION STRATEGIES
- Memory Strategies
A. Creating Mental Linkages 1.Grouping
2.Associating/elaborating
3.Placing new words into a context
B. Applying images and sounds 1.Using imagery
2.Semantic mapping
3.Using keywords
4.Representing sounds in memory
C. Reviewing well 1.Structured viewing
D. Employing action 1. Using physical response or sensation
2.Using mechanical techniques
- Cognitive Strategies
A. Practicing 1.Repeating
2.Formally practicing with sounds and writing systems
3.Recognizing and using formulas and patterns
4.Recombining
5.Practicing naturalistically
B. Receiving and sending messages 1.Getting the idea quickly
2.Using resources for receving and
sending mesaages
C.Analyzing and reasoning 1.Reasoning deductively
2. Analyzing expressions
3.Analyzing contrastively
4.Translating
5.Transferring
D.Creating structure for input and output 1.Taking notes
2.Summarizing
3.Highlighting
- Compensation Strategies
A. Guessing Intelligently 1.Using linguistic clues
2.Using other clues
B. Overcoming limitations 1.Switching to the mother tongue
in speaking and writing 2.Getting help
3.Using mime or gesture
4.Avoiding communication partially or totally
5.Selecting the topic
6.Adjusting or approximating the message
7.Coining words
8.Using a circumlocution or synonym
