Language learner strategies

Abstract

First paragraph: No modern language teacher, researcher or policy-maker needs to be reminded of the enormous changes that have taken place in modern foreign language teaching and learning over recent decades. We have gone from a world of translation and grammar to one of the four skills and the pupil as host or tourist. This move has been symptomatic of a general shift in the principles of language teaching and learning, away from a focus on syntactic and structural knowledge to one on communicative competence and interaction. Such changes in perspective have also gone hand in hand with other language policy developments. We have seen ‘languages for all' come and go. We have also seen the target language focus of communicative language teaching eclipsed by a return to grammar and explicit knowledge about language. Other agendas have emerged: autonomy, primary language learning, language across the curriculum, etc.