WELCOME

During our life, it is common to question ourselves how we learn and what we can
do to learn more. This blog was created for help you to find the most common ways
for learning. Everyone has different ways of learning, but it's important to know
which of the several ways are the most attractive for you.

Remeber, you have to keep in mind that not all the learning strategies function for everyone. Sometimes, the students keep using some strategies because the other people had recomended them or because they noticed that they were useful for others but they don't realize that they don't have the same impact on them; perhaps, this occur because there is a influence of the multiple intelligences, if you are not musical maybe listen to music could not help you, or if you are not spatial or visual making relations with words and images could not help you.

Good Luck!!!! and we hope you can find
useful strategies for learning English!!!!!!!!!

Our Weblog Experience

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Why some strategies are useful for learning a second language????

As Wenden (1985) reminds us, there is an old proverb which states: “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach him how to fish and he eats for a lifetime”. Applied to the language teaching and learning field, this proverb might be interpreted to mean that if students are provided with answers, the immediate problem is solved. But if they are taught the strategies to work out the answers for themselves, they are empowered to manage their own learning.


The term language learning strategy has been defined by many researchers. Wenden and Rubin (1987:19) define learning strategies as "... any sets of operations, steps, plans, routines used by the learner to facilitate the obtaining, storage, retrieval, and use of information." Richards and Platt (1992:209) state that learning strategies are "intentional behavior and thoughts used by learners during learning so as to better help them understand, learn, or remember new information." Faerch Claus and Casper (1983:67) stress that a learning strategy is "an attempt to develop linguistic and sociolinguistic competence in the target language." According to Stern (1992:261), "the concept of learning strategy is dependent on the assumption that learners consciously engage in activities to achieve certain goals and learning strategies can be regarded as broadly conceived intentional directions and learning techniques." All language learners use language learning strategies either consciously or unconsciously when processing new information and performing tasks in the language classroom. Since language classroom is like a problem-solving environment in which language learners are likely to face new input and difficult tasks given by their instructors, learners' attempts to find the quickest or easiest way to do what is required, that is, using language learning strategies is
inescapable.

Review of literature

The book Learning Strategies in Second Language Acquisition talks about the topic we putting across, for example it says that students apply learning strategies during this process and that they can be described and classify.
Some studies have been based in the learning strategies, and the uses it has in different students.
In this book we can find a study about the learning strategies use by beginnig and intermediate ESL students. this study tried to identify


Also it says that students create practice opportunities and naturalistic practice in for the reading skill as well for the listening skill. Moreover, it says that the main strategies that are more used frequetly for reading include double-check monitoring, comprenhension monitoring, problem identification, substitution, resourcing, interpretetion, reading the passage aloud in the second language acquisition to help comprenhension, etc.

It also talks about gender differences in strategy use but it doesn't put across any clear conclusion about this given that the number of male and female students that were the objects of this study were small; however within this group was

an indication of more careful, planned approach on the strategies of advance organizations and direct attention more frequently than boys, while in writing, oral work and grammar tasks, planning, monitoring, evaluating and pattern/rule application were more common among girls than boys...Males by contrast were more likely than girls to use sound to determine the appropriteness of their use of language...On a more positive note, however, females would appear to engage in a greater degree of cooperation which may be beneficial to oral proficiency...Here, girls were much more likely to employ strategies of creating practice opportunuties and naturalistic practice... In all of the skill areas considered, both males and females used a mixture of strategies that can be viewed as either positive or negative.

(Graham, 1997)

There are some studies that you can find in some books and also you can find the definition, strategies. You can find some information about learning strategies focused on learning grammar and vocabulary, as well as in other areas.
Grammar Learning Through Strategy Training.
Learner Strategy Use and Performance on Language Tests

Videos

This section is about some interviews that we made to some teachers and students from the Uqroo. The questions we made to both teachers and students were a little different. Here You can check them and listen to their opinions about some strategies that they consider are useful for learning a second language.Moreover, you can notice that you will learn with some daily activities that you usually do in your native language just that this time you have to do it in the other one.Likewise, you can be aware of some strategies that can help you and that you didn't think about up until then.

Teachers' Opinions
The purpose of these interviews were to know what strategies are useful for learning a second language.
This is an English teacher Genny Mena who works at Uqroo University.

This is an English teacher Jose Luis Borges who works at Uqroo University.



Students' Opinions
We asked Enlish language studens about what strategies they use in order to improve each skill (listening, speaking, writing and reading.)

Tips to improve your skills!!!!!! Try them

LISTENING
We think that listening is one of the most difficult skill to improve, but it isn't impossible to developing, so here you have some tips to improve it:
Paying attention: You should TRY to listen and understand. This seems like an obvious thing to do, but sometimes it is easy to forget because when you are listening it is easy to let your mind think only about strange words. People forget about continuing to listen to new things and they concentrate only on what they didn't understand. It is okay to stop listening to think about what something meant, but don't completely stop listening to the new things. Always remember to focus your attention again to what you are listening to.
when you pay attention to your listening you should try to catch:
• General idea (what is the information about?)
• Details (dates, telephone numbers, about the speaker etc)
• Predicting
• Drawing inferences
• Summarizing



Write things down:When you are listening to something try to do some dictation. This will help you to discover your accuracy in listening.
It will help you to think not only about the general meaning but also about exact words.
:)Hearing as much as possible English language is a good way to improve your listening. Why don't you try watching movies or listening to music? this could help you to keep in touch with English language.(:

READING
For reading you can consider the following tips, experiment with different methods and see what works for you:
Before beginning to read, think about the purpose for the reading. What are you supposed to get out of it? Jot down your thoughts.
Survey the reading. Look at the title of the piece, the subheadings. What is in dark print or stands out? Are there illustrations or graphs?
Read the introduction and conclusion, then go back and read the whole assignment. Or read the first line in every paragraph to get an idea of how the ideas progress, then go back and read from the beginning.

Scan the entire reading, then focus on the most interesting or relevant parts to read in detail.

If you get stuck in the reading: Read it again and try to infer what the sentence or the word means.


When the going gets difficult, and you don't understand the reading, slow down and reread sections.
Answer these question in your own words: What's the author talking about? What does the author want me to get out of this?
To understand what you are reading is important to know vocabulary, that's why you should read and read and find the meaning for new words.

WRITING

Writing can be difficult and time consuming for many of us, but if we take into account the following list we can find the happy side of writing:
Prewriting: It's the firs step in the writing process, its porpuse is to find a topic for writing, to collect ideas and information and to research if necessary. In prewriting you can use:
Questioning
Making a cluster diagram
Brainstorming
Writing a draft: Writing more than one draft allows you to develop your ideas and to find the best way to present them to your reader. You have to:


think about the topic sentence
think about your suportive ideas
think about a conclusion
Revising your writing: Finally you have to ask yourself the following questions:
* Are my ideas clear and easy to follow?
* Will my reader be able to find and understand my main idea?
* Did I provide enough details and examples?
* Did I take out all unnecesary information?
* Will the first part of my writing catch my reader's attention?

If your answers were 'yes', so you have a very good writing!!!!!!!!!! :>

SPEAKING
Sometimes it is difficult to practice or develop this skill in view of the fact that the students usually don't practice out of school. You should try to create oportunities to practice;
You can try to speak with native speaker or students of the language very often.
You should try to have advantage of the internet; that is, instead of writing with foreign people in the chat you should use the videoconference or the calling at the MSN.
It is important that you also try to improve your pronunciation. There are some softwares that allow you to check your pronunciation and to show what your grade is. Moreover, you can make tongue-twisters in Englsih in order to train your tongue.

We take some ideas from the following pages http://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/dep/eigog/listening/strategies.html
http://www.all4ed.org/files/WritingNext.pdf

Try to improve your skills now!!!!!!!!!

We want you to improve all your skills. In this section you can find some useful links about listening, vocabulary and grammar and sepeaking. In the reading section you can find two books in english that you can read here in the blog and also a link where you can find other books on the internet.
We hope the content of this section could help you.

LISTENING:
http://www.ompersonal.com.ar/omlisten2/advanced/unit01a.htm
http://www.mansioningles.com/listening00.htm
http://www.isabelperez.com/songs.htm

VOCABULARY AND GRAMMAR:
http://www.eslcafe.com
http://www.agendaweb.org

SPEAKING:
http://www.eslfast.com/robot/
http://esl.fis.edu/learners/writing/index.htm


READINGS

Open publication - Free publishing - More new

Open publication - Free publishing - More eclipse

If you want more variety of book, check this link:
http://www.readbookonline.net/