And even more thanks for drawing my attention to the positive side of the
learner strategy theories! I'll see what I can do to make the course
more student-initiative-oriented! Looks like fun--to be engaged in
collaborative inquiry with students :-)
Cheers,
Angel
On Fri, 12 Jan 1996, Mark Warschauer wrote:
> Congratulations, Angel, both on finishing your dissertation and on your new
> job! Now the fun begins ;-).
>
> It seems to me that the central kernel of the learner strategies movement
> is to (a) promote a perspective which views learners as active agents in
> their own learning, and (b) help learners discover better ways to assert
> this agency. Looking at it this way, I don't find it in contradiciton with
> a sociocultural approach (at least not with my own perspective on
> sociocultural approaches).
>
> Perhaps you could teach the class more through a collaborative inquiry
> method. Have the students think about and explore their own strategies
> they use. Have the students-- through interviews and observations and
> talk-aloud protocols--investigate what strategies other learners are using.
> Have the learners develop their own report of effective learner strategies
> and how to promote them, and post it on the World Wide Web for others to
> read and comment on. Anyway, those are my random thoughts on the subject.
> Mark
>
> Mark Warschauer, University of Hawai'i, markw who-is-at hawaii.edu
> http://www.lll.hawaii.edu/markw
>
> >Hi fellow xmca'ers,
> >
> >:-) I've at long last finished my dissertation! Well, I'd like to thank
> >all those of you who have given me so much help and support, refs..,
> >leads, and discussed with me my ideas while I was doing it...! Your
> >VIRTUAL support has been very real! :-) Thanks!!
> >
> >Well, I'm going onto the next stage of my life... to take up a teaching
> >position in the City University of Hong Kong... this 22nd of January... and
> >they ask me to teach a course on "learner strategies" in L2 learning or
> >SLA (second language acquisition)...
> >
> >Can I teach something I no longer believe in??? Well, that's life, isn't it?
> >I've glanced through the "textbook" they told me they've ordered for the
> >students... it's Rebecca Oxford's Language Learning Strategies: What
> >Every Teacher Should Know (1990). Sigh... I want to look at it from a
> >sociocultural and social practice perspective... I don't really think
> >these "strategies" contained in this textbook are really helpful...,
> >e.g., memory strategies--how to memorize L2 vocabulary...
> >
> >Please correct me if you think there's a positive side to this line of
> >theories and stuff... I'd like to hear your thoughts on how I can turn the
> >course into a more interesting one, from a sociocultural perspective...
> >
> >Thanks in advance!
> >
> >Angel
>
> Mark Warschauer, University of Hawai'i, markw who-is-at hawaii.edu
> http://www.lll.hawaii.edu/markw
>
>
>