378. Is Mafalda a good student?



Very interesting, what follows, and helpful, no doubt. It makes you think. Taken from http://www.crie.org.nz/ . It is a paper written by Carol Griffiths, School of Foundations Studies - AIS St Helens, Auckland, New Zealand. Worth to read it: www.crie.org.nz/research_paper/c_griffiths_op1.pdf The title of the paper is as inspiring as “Language Learning Strategies: Theory and Reserch”, February 2004.



Although “the communicative approach implicitly encourages learners to take greater responsibility for their own learning” (Oxford et al, 1989, p.33), typically the emphasis in the communicative language movement, as in previous methods and approaches, has been on how teachers teach, with relatively little attention paid to how learners learn. Even today, when the communicative approach underlies a substantial number of syllabuses for speakers of other languages, and in spite of insights from a now considerable body of research, it is unusual to find textbooks which include learning strategies in their material. A rare exception is Blueprint (Abbs and Freebairn, 1991), and even in this series, the space dedicated to learning strategies consists of no more than a paragraph at the end of each section.



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