Strategy Inventory for Language Learning

As a starting point, I decided to take the SILL with my French language learning experience in mind (most recent before this course). I was honestly a bit afraid to start with Yaqui because I fear my lack of resources and a structured classroom might have limited my strategies.

French:


High Strategies: Using mental processes; compensating for missing knowledge; learning with others; overall

I was surprised to see that "learning with others" was a high strategy for me, given my learning style questionnaire revealed that I was an individualistic learner (I was even considering the same context!). This could imply that my preferred learning style does not reflect my learning strategy (or visa versa?).

Medium Strategies: Remembering more effectively; organizing and evaluating learning

I thought these two strategies would have been "high" for me since I do a lot to remember new knowledge (i.e. writing down (repeatedly) new words, creating groups, using them in sentence, making connections, etc). I figure the "evaluation" part of the latter strategy is what brought me down to medium here because I do tend to be quite organized in my language learning.

Low Strategies: Managing emotions

Again, this does not surprise me, given I am a Thinker, not a Feeler. The way I have seen it, emotions do not play a large affective role in my language learning experience. That is, I have not had an extremely traumatizing experience related to language that would cause me to be anxious or nervous when practicing it.

On the other hand, when I consider my Yaqui learning experience, the results are as follows:


Yaqui:

High Strategies: Organizing and Evaluating learning

Due to the context in which I am learning Yaqui, I have had to organize my lessons myself in addition to constant evaluation of my abilities in the language to guide future learning. This strategy was in Medium with French because it was in a standard classroom environment where I did not have to organize lessons and evaluation was done primarily by an instructor.

Medium Strategies: Remembering more effectively; using mental processes; managing emotions; overall

Remembering more effectively was pretty much the same score for both Yaqui and French- I think this speaks to my consistency in learning strategies/styles no matter the language (this of course could be problematic if a particular language does not lend itself well to my personal preferences). Unlike with French, Managing Emotions was higher up in my Yaqui strategies. Again, this is likely caused by the learning environment I am in where I keep this blog and discuss the language learning experience with my peers.

Low Strategies: Compensating for missing knowledge; learning with others

I believe these two strategies are on the Low side simply due to lack of resources, native speaker input, and opportunities to use the language in general. I had to put "1" down for many of these because they involve interactions with a native, or even "other," speaker.


Interestingly, my "Overall score" was High in French, yet Medium in Yaqui. Either I do not have the resources to promote/encourage the use of more strategies (to get to the High level), or I am not comfortable changing what I normally do to incorporate new strategies into my language learning experience. Griffiths conducted a study to see which strategies were frequently (and infrequently) used by high and low level proficiency language learners. She found that high level learners used strategies to manage their own learning, expand their vocabulary, improve grammar knowledge, involve the use of resources, and to use all language skills. These learners did not frequently use games, write diaries, or use a self-study center. Low level proficiency learners, on the other hand, rely on the dictionary as their resource (not other native speakers, tv, newspapers, etc).

Reflecting on my language learning experiences, I believe I (at least) attempt to use the same strategies that high level proficiency students use, particularly when I was learning Spanish and French. For Yaqui, however, I am at quite a low proficiency, and therefore my strategies are rather limited, similar to what Griffiths had found (i.e. high level proficiency learners use more varied strategies than lower level learners).

So, the question is, how do we as instructors promote a varied, and wider, use of these strategies across the spectrum of language learner proficiencies. As Griffiths mentions, some strategies may need to be reserved for high level learners due to their difficult nature (i.e. speaking with a native speaker, reading a newspaper). I do think that instructors at low levels can at least start to build up these strategies. For example, instead of having their students read a newspaper, have them read a classified ad or children's story. As their proficiency increases, instructors can expand upon these strategies and encourage students to use them without instruction from the teacher.