1. Learning Strategy Training, Cooperative Learning, and Multiple Intelligences
Learning Strategy Training, Cooperative Learning, and Multiple Intelligences
LEARNING STRATEGY TRAINING
Learning strategy is the specific actions to make the students better in learning a second
language.It suggests that teachers should elicit the problems of the students and try to develop
a solution for them. Learning Strategy Training is based on problems students encounter in
the process of learning target language. These problems are needed to be solved for an
effective learning. First ,students are given the strategy and than they are expected to apply it.
Learning Strategy Training focuses on learner training as much as language teaching.
Students should be responsible for their own learning. They should follow their learning
process and be aware of their deficient and efficent sides. They should also monitor
theirselves and identify what they need. The teacher helps them to facilitate their learning and
to be more effective in learning the target language. After the students get some learning
strategies, they have a cognition about them. But they also have a metacognition which means
that the students should be aware of the use of the strategies.
The teacher plays a modelling role while teaching the strategies to the students. S/he applies
the strategy on a contex in the class by thinking aloud. He attracts the student’s attentions on
his beahviours and the way using the technique. As he is performing the techniques, he also
informs the students what he gets by doing so. After he has introduced the strategy, he wants
the students to practice on the paper given by himself. He directs the students while they are
practicing and he asks questions about the practice and the students reply them. The students’
previous experiences are taken into account by the teacher which increase the motivation of
them. The teacher also asks why they think so. There is two-way interaction between the
teacher and the students. In this method, the teacher lets the student to think about their
questions and guess the answer from the context rather than giving the answer directly. He
gives feedbacks for their guesses and reinforces the answers’s accuracy by looking at the
context. After the practice is done, students discuss about their performances and they Express
what they think about the usefullness of the strategy. They indentify what they acquire and
what they need more. The teacher emboldens them they will achieve their difficulties over
time using the strategy. He also announces that they should do more practice on the strategy
out of the class and he reminds them how to use the strategy. These strategies will be useful
for the student’s academic studies as well as their learning the target language.
2. Learning Strategy Training, Cooperative Learning, and Multiple Intelligences
Students should have some strategies in every field of their studies to be able to get much
more success.
COOPERATIVE LEARNING
Before explaning what the cooperative learning means, lets think about the word sense of the
“cooperation”. Cooperation means that common working together with the others. While
studying cooperatively, every member of the certain groups takes responsibility for the
existing task. But it is mostly a problem to keep the group members together and ensure that
everyone carries out his/her responsibility. So the teacher need training his students to make
them participate in a group working actively. In learning target language, group working is an
inevitable way of effective learning. So cooperative learning assures that the students should
learn how to operate in groups. There should be a way from interdependence to
independence. This means that the students should learn how to act in a group according to
the group members. They should be associated with each other and make an effort on the task.
By working in groups, they will become conscious about their responsibilities and then they
can implement any other tasks indivudually. First they will be dependent on each other and
after they obtain the necessary skills they can act independently because each one of them will
be able to achieve his/her responsiblity without delay.
Now let’s see how a language teacher can apply the strategy to a class. First he infoms the
students that they will wok in groups on the specific subject. The subject items are distributed
to the students in pieces. Each group is responsible for its own part. After each group study on
its part, a number of group members are transfered to another group and some of them stay
their own groups. By this , the students have chance to tell each other about their own parts.
This continues with some other transferrings. All the students have an experience in each
group and they acquire different parts of the complete subject,then they combine all the parts.
At last, all the students gather in their original group and tell about what they have learned
from the others and they construct a full story. This activity lets the students interract and
communicate with each other. Also the activity helps the students learn about the subject by
using the target language. while the students teach the specific subject to each other, they can
reinforce their own learning and understanding. ( Learning through teaching is an effective
way of learning) At the end of the activity, the students are asked to work together on new
vocabulary items. Then the teacher informs them that they will take an individual test and the
individual scores will also be combined with their group’sscores.
3. Learning Strategy Training, Cooperative Learning, and Multiple Intelligences
He wirtes the criteria of the test on the board and then ask the students how they feel about the
test. The students like the testing way and they give positive reflections to the teacher. The
students complete the test by changing group member and then they evaluate their scores. All
the students are given a duty for evaluation process .By this way the students learn to take
responsibility and how to fullfil a task.
As we see in the experience, peer observation is highly couraged. Each student play a
mediator role in somehow. The students also develop their ability to make their group more
effective. Individual testing implies that each student is responsible for own development. At
the end of the test, it is teacher’s duty to inform the students how they are done well and how
much a group have achived. There is a combination of teaching language and teaching other
learning skills. Students should be given on social skills like in learner strategy training.
Multiple-Intelligences
Before telling about multiple intelligences, it will be useful to define what the intelligence
means. Itelligence is the human capacity to think, understand and produce something with
their thoughts. All humanbeings have a different capacity to think and understand ,of course.
Their capacity can be associated with multiple-intelligences which are divided into seven
particul categories: Logical/mathematical, visual/spatial, body/kinesthetic, musical/rytmic,
interpersonal, intrapersonal, verbal/linguistic intelligences. This categorazion is really useful
for effective learning. It has possitive effects in learning a second language,too. How can the
language teacher teach the target language to his students by using multiple-intelligence? The
teacher should be aware of his students capacity, If the students have struggle with learning
the target language, what the teacher should do is to identify how the majority of his class can
learn easly. This can be possible by applying the multiple-intelligences tests to the students.
The teacher should teach by the way the students learn, not the way he likes. After he identify
his student’s way, he should evaluate the results and develop a new teaching way accordance
with some of the multiple-intelligences. This is all about problem based. The teacher should
be aware of the student’s learning problems and produce a solutions for them. Multiple-
intelligences are really cut out for learning process.
4. Learning Strategy Training, Cooperative Learning, and Multiple Intelligences
ACTIVITIES
A. 1. The difference between language training and learner training.
Language training is based on the purpose of teaching the learners language. they learn all the
things about a given language. they are expected to learn functions, rules, linguistic forms,
how to use language and acquire the language skills also. This focuses on teaching language.
on the other hand, learner trainig is based on learners and their problem sor difficulties in
learning. ın learner trainin, learners are provided with skills and strategies to be able to learn
more easily and effectively. The correlation between two is that by training learners it can be
easier to teach a language or learn a language or a specific topic.
A.2. “ thinks us, not me.”
It sounds like a slogan focusing on a paticular sense. This is the idea the cooperative learning
instruction suggests. We know that cooperative learning puts forward that learning should be
by working together and interraction of the learners. as we see in the istruction above,
students learn how to organize a group, the ability to take responsiblity in a group etc.
working in a group requires some must which the most important is acting by taking into
account all the group member. The member should not act individually.