Research on styles and strategies of learning

In this topic we are going to compare the concepts of styles and strategies applied to the
learning process. Most of the time, we confuse these two terms and we do not know that
both are towards different situations.

The term of learning style is used to encompass four aspects of the person: cognitive style,
i.e., preferred or habitual patterns of mental functioning; patterns of attitudes and interests
that affect what an individual will pay most attention to in a learning situation; a tendency to
seek situations compatible with one's own learning patterns; and a tendency to use certain
learning strategies and avoid others (Lawrence, 1984).
What Lawrence means is that, in this case a student, can learn on different ways of learning.
The students have a look at the situation, analyze and then they decide what to do
depending on the situation. This decision could be affected by many factors as the interest,
the attitudes and also with emotional and personal behavior that mean the students have an
internal choice which they are going to take taking into consideration what they want to
accomplish with.

Learning strategies are the often-conscious steps or behaviors used by learners to enhance
the acquisition, storage, retention, recall, and use of new information (Rigney, 1978; Oxford,
1990).
Rigney also says that “many different strategies can be used by learner like metacognitive
techniques for organizing, focusing, and evaluating one's own learning; affective strategies
for handling emotions or attitudes; social strategies for cooperating with others in the
learning process; cognitive strategies for linking new information with existing schemata and
for analyzing and classifying it; memory strategies for entering new information into memory
storage and for retrieving it when needed; and compensation strategies (such as guessing
or using gestures) to overcome deficiencies and gaps in one's current language knowledge”.
Style is the more general term, being “an individual’s natural, habitual, and preferred way of
absorbing, processing, and retaining new information and skills” (Kinsella, 1995, p. 171).

Christison (2003) points out that there are four style ways which are chosen by the learner
and that each style has its own characteristics that perfectly define how a learner is.

These following concepts of styles are described according to what Christison wanted to
mean.

Communicative: These learners were defined by the following learning strategies: they like
to learn by watching, listening to native speakers, talking to friends in English, watching
television in English, using English out of class, learning new words by hearing them, and
learning by conversation.

Analytical: These learners like studying grammar, studying English books and newspapers,
studying alone, finding their own mistakes, and working on problems set by the teacher.

Authority-oriented: The learners prefer the teacher to explain everything, having their own
textbook, writing everything in a notebook, studying grammar, learning by reading, and
learning new words by seeing them.

Concrete: These learners tend to like games, pictures, film, video, using cassettes, talking
in pairs, and practicing English outside class.

Another author like Schmeck explains that “Learning strategy is a sequence of procedures
for accomplish learning, and the specific procedures within this sequence are called learning
tactics.

Learning strategies are the specific mental and communicative procedures that learners
employ in order to learn (Chamot, 2005; O’Malley and Chamot, 1990).

Chamot, in other words, explains that the learners have to deal with the precise and better
manner to do the things in order to get the result that they expect. One example of this would
be when a students is doing an exam and the time is not enough to complete it, the students
can choose the option of starting with the easy questions (supposing that he/she knows the
answer) and then finishing with the difficult ones. This way the learner will have preferred
the manner which best fit to the situation.
Every task and exercise will be underpinned by at least one strategy, although in most
classrooms learners are unaware of these strategies. One of the hypotheses being tested
by learning strategy researchers is that awareness and deployment of strategies will lead to
more effective learning (O’Malley, 1990). Cohen (1998) state that the goal of learning
strategies is to “affect the learner’s motivational or affective state, or the way in which the
learner selects, acquires, organizes, or integrates new knowledge” (p. 315). Of that way,
learning strategies enable students to take more responsibilities of their own language
learning and personal

TASKS
 Do a comparative chart about the difference between style and strategy.

 Give two examples (situations) where each concept takes place.

REFERENCES

Chamot, A.U. & Kupper, L. (1989). Learning strategies in foreign language instruction.
"Foreign Language Annals," 22, pp13-24.

Christison, M.A., 2003. Learning styles and strategies. In: Nunan, D. (Ed.), Practical English
Language Teaching. McGraw-Hill, New York, pp. 267e288.

Cohen, A.D., 1998: Strategies in Learning and Using a Second Language. Essex, U.K.:

Longman.

Lawrence, G. (1984). A synthesis of learning style research involving the MBTI. "Journal of
Psychological Type," 8, pp2-15.

O'Malley, J.M. & Chamot, A.U., 1990: Learning Strategies in Second Language Acquisition.

Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Rigney, J. W. (1978). Learning strategies: A theoretical perspective. In H.F. O'Neil, Jr. (Ed.),
"Learning strategies," pp164-205. New York: Academic Press.