Language Learning Strategies: What Every Teacher Should Know

Provided an explanation of activities that I was already employing in my classroom. Encouraged me to further develop these activities based on a deeper understanding of what promotes language development.

What can I say? As an ELT teacher, I always wanted to know about strategies to hep ELLs with their L2 acquisition process. This book makes it really easy to manage and use with students.

For school

As a university and now secondary school foreign language teacher, I was extremely excited to find this book--it sounded like exactly what I would need to have on hand when students came to me with problems learning vocabulary, or with their fears of speaking in front of their peers because their accent was not up to par. While I agree with the review written by Chris Elvin--that there seem to be no major strategies missed in this book, and that the research is nothing if not solid--be prepared to work for the information. This book was not written for classroom teachers--it was written by an academic for an academic audience, by a professor seeking tenure. For this reason, I have docked it a star. If you want an academic source to read, consider my rating five stars. But if you're a classroom teacher like me who simply wants to give my students every opportunity to succeed, you'll spend hours and hours analyzing her research before you can really start to apply any of the materials to your classroom. Just a thought. I'm returning my copy...

This book reviews much of Rebecca Oxford's research on second language (L2) study strategies as of 1990. She is the undisputed heavyweight champion of this field, and this book covers a broad range of research. I believe it is a must read for all language teachers. There are innumerable practical exercises to help students covering: memory, cognitive, metacognitive, compensatory, affective and social, L2 learning strategies. Her 2008 publication in Asian EFL Journal is also well worth reading (and is free to access on their Internet site). Hats off to the Grand Lady of L2 study strategies!

Did you know that you can practice a language by translating? Or by conversing in that language? Or by reading materials which are printed in that language? Did you know that cognates and English borrowings can help you? Did you know that it is worthwhile to learn fixed utterances, such as hello and thank you? If you do, then you probably don't need this book. I bought this book after ten frustrating years of trying to learn Korean. I was hoping to find something which I haven't already tried. The last chapter deals with high-tech language learning projects. I would rather resolve the international hostility which inhibits use of the technology which we already have. When ESL students write questions on Yahoo Answers, they get wisecrack answers like "Come back after you learn some English." To register for a Korean discussion forum, one has to enter a Korean citizenship number. When we tell the discussion leaders that we are interested in participating too, they ignore us.

or those who want to give multicultural education the justice it deserves, which is why the concept is trying to make its way into American "schooling," DO NOT USE THIS TEXT!!! The authors state information that is both hurtful and untruthful for many groups living in the USA, since before the country's name took hold. An excellent example would be on under "Thinking in the Early Years." African Americans are referred to as immigrants! "Then the slave trade began, bringing in the largest block of immigrants ever, albeit the fact that they came involuntarily" (p. 4). I began using this in my course and now the students are analyzing it for the poor job that the authors have done with history and depicting ethnic/cultural groups in the USA. If you'd like to use this book as an exercise to see how Euro-ethnocentrism deals with people of color, then do so. But don't support nor disseminate this information. It's just bad for everyone.

Language Learning Strategies is a very well organised study of the techniques that learners utilise in order to master a foreign language. The results of Rebecca Oxford's research has yielded a four-level taxonomy of learning strategies, which she presents in outline form as well as in depth, and which is the great strength of this book. At the lowest level of her classification, there are concrete examples of every strategy in a number of different languages, and no matter how hard I tried, I could not think of a new strategy which wasn't already covered somewhere in her diagram. The book also contains strategy awareness surveys, and a mixture of adopted and original strategy training exercises covering all four language skills, which most teachers should find useful. It is well referenced and well cross-referenced, and there is a useful chapter on networking, should you wish to pursue your studies further. The only slight concern that I have about this book is that some of the exercises seem to require quite a high degree of sophistication in order to play, and that there may be a limit to which students want to spend time talking about such strategies in class, however useful they may be.

Thanks. I`m quite satisfied!

Es bastante denso pero cumple muy bien su función. Es muy interesante para seguir aprendiendo sobre cómo aprendemos. Es una de as obras más útiles en este ámbito, se'gun tengo entendido.

I found this book to be very help for my own language learning and for language teaching. It's very thorough but not dry. Good examples of the strategies.

Alles wie angeboten. Hab nur Positives zu erzählen.

UNI works GEM!