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Explore the impact of learning styles, strategies, and cognitive processes on educational outcomes. Discover how different styles influence problem-solving, reactions to challenges, and language learning experiences. Gain insights into cognitive functioning and strategies for effective learning. Learning field dependence/independence and left/right brain functioning are examined, along with ambiguity tolerance in language learning.
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Psychology II Learning Styles and Strategies
Who was your favorite teacher? • Did s/he influence your decision of becoming a teacher? • What did he do that made him a good teacher? • What were you like as a language learner?
How do you react when you face a problem? When there is an unexpected change of plans? When other people don’t do what you expect them to do? When you get angry? When there is something that causes a lot of joy in you? • What do you need to do in order to learn something? • What “strategies” do you use to learn new information? Do you always use the same “strategies”? • What were you like as a foreign language student? What difficulties did you have to learn the language? What strategies did you use to learn it?
Styles and Strategies Strategies: methods of approaching a problem or task Processes Style: Intellectual functioning that make you different from others.
Cognitive style learning style • cognitive, affective, and physiological traits that are relatively stable indicators of how learners perceive, interact with, and respond to the learning environment. • a general predisposition, voluntary or not, toward processing information in a particular way.
People’s styles are determined by the way they internalize their total environment, and since the internalization process is not strictly cognitive, we find that physical, affective, and cognitive domains merge in learning styles.
Represents the ability to perceive particular, relevant items or factors in a “field” of distractive items Enables you to distinguish parts from a whole, to concentrate on something, to analyze separate variables without the contamination of neighbouring variables Too much FI may result in cognitive “tunnel vision” FI tends to be generally more independent, competitive, and self-confident The tendency to be “dependent” on the total field so that the parts embedded within the field are not easily perceived, although that total field is perceived more clearly as a unified whole Field dependence is synonymous with field sensitivity. You perceive the whole picture FD people tend to be more socialized, to derive their self-identity from persons around them, and are usually more empathic and perceptive of the feelings and thoughts of others. FI / D
It is closely related to classroom learning It involves analysis, attention to details, and mastering of exercises, drills and other focused activities. By virtue of these people’s empathy, social outreach, and perception of other people, they’re successful in earning the communicative aspects of a second language They seek natural, face-to-face communication FI/D in language learning
Left- and Right-brain functioning • The left hemisphere is associated with logical, analytical thought, and 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
They prefer a deductive style of teaching, better at producing separate words, gathering the specifics of language, carrying out sequences of operations, and dealing with abstraction, classification, labelling, and reorganization They appear to be more successful in an inductive classroom environment, deal better with whole images, generalizations, metaphors, emotional reactions, and artistic expressions. Left-brained / Right-brained
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 there are 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. 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. Intolerance of ambiguity also has its advantages and disadvantages. Certain intolerance enables one to guard against the wishy-washiness, 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. It has been found that ambiguity tolerance can predict the success of language learners. Ambiguity Tolerance
There are two styles that are closely related to the reflectivity/impulsivity (R/I) dimension: intuitive and systematic styles. An intuitive style implies an approach in which a person makes a number of different gambles on the basis of “hunches,” with possibly several successive gambles before a solution is achieved. 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. It is also conceivable that those with impulsive styles may go through a number of rapid transitions of semigrammatical stages of SLA, with reflective persons tending to remain longer at a particular stage with “larger” leaps from stage to stage. Systematic thinkers tend to weigh all the considerations in a problem, work out all the loopholes, and then, after extensive reflection, venture a solution. Reflective students are slower but more accurate than impulsive students in reading. the other hand, a reflective person may require patience from the teacher, who must allow more time for the student to struggle with responses. Impulsivity and Reflectivity
Visual and Auditory • Another dimension of learning style is the preference that learners show toward either visual or auditory input. • Visual learners tend to prefer reading and studying charts, drawings, and other graphic information, while • auditory learners prefer listening to lectures and audiotapes. • Most successful learners utilize other visual and auditory input, but slight preferences one way or the other may distinguish one learner from another, an important factor for classroom instruction.
Strategies Communication Strategies Learning Strategies
Learning Strategies • Styles are general characteristics that differentiate one individual from another; strategies are those specific “attacks” that we make on a given problem. • The field of second language acquisition has distinguished between two types of strategy: learning strategies and communication strategies. • The former relate to input –to processing, storage, and retrieval, that is, to taking in messages from others. The latter pertain to output, how we productively express meaning, how we deliver messages to others. .
Learning Strategies • Language learning strategies into three main categories: • Metacognitive strategies indicate an “executive” function, strategies that involve planning for learning, thinking about the learning process as it is taking place, monitoring of one’s production or comprehension, and evaluating learning after an activity is completed. • Cognitive strategies are limited to specific learning tasks and involve more direct manipulation of the learning material itself. • Socioaffective strategies have to do with social mediating activity and interacting with others (see page 125) • Two major forms of strategy use have been documented: classroom-based or textbook-embedded training, now called strategies-based instructor , and autonomous self-help training. Both have been demonstrated to be effective for various learners in various contexts.
Communication Strategies • Learning strategies deal with the receptive domain of intake, memory storage, and recall. • Communication strategies pertain to the employment of verbal or nonverbal mechanisms for the productive communication of information. Communication strategies are “potentially conscious plans for solving what to an individual presents itself a problem in reaching a particular communicative goal. (see page 128)
Two major forms of strategy use have been documented: classroom-based or textbook-embedded training, now called strategies-based instructor , and autonomous self-help training. Both have been demonstrated to be effective for various learners in various contexts. • Strategies-based instruction is the result of the application of learning and communication strategies to classroom learning. The key is to offer the learner autonomy, and one of the most important goals of language teaching should be the facilitation of that autonomy. • Several different models of SBI are now being practiced in language classes around the world. • Teachers need to help students to become aware of their own style preferences and the strategies that are derived from those styles. Through checklists, tests, and interviews, teachers can become aware of students’ tendencies and then offer advice on beneficial in-class and extra-class strategies.
Teachers can embed strategy awareness and practice into their pedagogy. As they utilize techniques as communicative games, rapid reading, fluency exercises, and error analysis, teachers can help students consciously and unconsciously to practice successful strategies. • Certain compensatory techniques are sometimes practiced to help students overcome certain weaknesses. • Textbooks include strategy instruction as part of a content-centred approach (see pages 132 - 135)