Learning Styles, Language Strategy Repertoire, and Motivation
in the Performance of L2 Tasks, 2011
Over the years I have taken numerous approaches to the conduct of research on language learner strategies. This effort was an outgrowth of a course that I have been teaching at the University of Minnesota since 2001, “Practical Language Learning for International Communication.”[1] The course provided students with a background on the learning of an L2 and on language and culture strategies for maximizing study abroad. is a new form of research, namely, the collecting and analyzing of student case studies of learning style preferences (using Cohen, Oxford, & Chi, 2002b), language strategy repertoire (using Cohen, Oxford, & Chi, 2002a), and motivational fluctuation (using Cohen & Dörnyei, 2001) on two language tasks, conducted both as self-study for their midterm paper and then as the study of three subjects of their own choosing as their final course project. Of the 47 students taking the course in Fall 2010, 22 agreed to have their midterm papers included in the data set. Seventeen of these also agreed to having their final paper included, each with three case studies, so there were 41 case studies from the study of other learners, bringing the grand total to 63 in this multi-case-study effort. A close analysis of these case studies identified 20 studies that most effectively illustrated how learning style preferences, strategy choices, and motivational fluctuation come together in the performance of L2 tasks. Prior to this study, my references to the close-knit intersection of styles, strategies, and motivation on specific tasks had been limited to hypothetical data (Cohen, 2003).
I published a book chapter which showcased examples from three of the subjects:
Cohen, A. D. (2012). Strategies: The interface of styles, strategies, and motivation on tasks. In S. Mercer, S. Ryan, & M. Williams (Eds.), Psychology for language learning: Insightsare from research, theory and practice (pp. 136-150). Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan.
Below are summaries crafted to draw on empirical findings from the students' final course projects – intended to illustrate the intersection of styles, strategies, and motivation on tasks.
Farha
Senior, female, born in US, speaking Kutchi (Indian language) in home, along with English. Started Arabic in an Islamic Day School as of 7th grade, with a traditional, grammar-focused approach to Arabic, so oral skills limited.
Task #1: Summarizing a text about a rabbit escaping from a snake
Farha found the task boring. The vocabulary was not concrete and not helpful for daily use. She found it too much like homework, and she felt under pressure when her friend asked her comprehension questions. Her style preferences were to be global (not detail-oriented), to make inferences, and to summarize. Her motivation was low to do the task and it got lower as she got into the task.
Task #2: Watched a few scenes from an Arabic movie without subtitles to see if she could figure out what was going on – a love story about a boy and girl who eloped but later got caught
She took notes as she watched the movie, and wrote down some key words that might help her decipher the scenes based on other context clues. After she wrote down a few main ideas, she called her native Arabic-speaking friend to confirm her ideas. Most of her ideas were correct, which she realized was consistent with her preference to synthesize (rather than analyze), since she was able to summarize the movie well by just having exposure to it, and guessing meanings. Her approach to the movie was also global in that she was just trying to get the main idea of the movie in Arabic and did not pay attention to the small details because they confused her. Her motivation was also increased by the fact that she had many friends who spoke Arabic, so watching movies would give her practice in listening comprehension. She was motivated because it was the first time she had sat down and taken notes while watching a movie without subtitles. It also gave her a chance to tune in more to other things she might have missed, such as body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, and the setting.
Sabah
20-year-old female, learning Hindi, some mutual intelligibility with her native language Urdu, which she spoke at home with her family, as well as with friends and relatives. Sabah was fairly proficient in both Urdu and English. She could understand almost everything in conversations and in movies in Hindi, but had a hard time speaking it.
Task #1: Watched a movie in Hindi without subtitles to see how she could do in understanding the scenes
According to the Learning Style Survey, Sabah was more visual that auditory, more closure-oriented than open, and more impulsive than reflective. When she watched her movie, she was not paying much attention to the dialogue, but focused more on the scenes.
Task #2: Reading a classical Hindi script
Since in the reading task, the passage was accompanied by pictures, Sabah tried to decipher the passage by understanding what the pictures meant. Interestingly, providing think-aloud data to the student researcher helped her, because she questioned what she was doing as she went along with the task. She was asking what the pictures meant and what significance the setting had. After a while, she understood the passage, and was able to answer her own questions. As reading comprehension strategies, Sabah underlined the main words in the passage and also paid close attention to the pictures.
She was highly motivated to do the task since Hindi was prominent in her social milieu.
Maureen
A beginner in college Spanish, F, 19, and never studied abroad.
Writing Task: Writing a postcard in Spanish to a friend she knew abroad
Being more deductive than inductive, highly analytic, and closure-oriented, she first practiced the new grammatical structures to build her confidence level before using them in her postcard. She was highly confident in her ability during the writing task because she had time to plan out the grammar structures before putting down her actual ideas.
Meghan
Junior, Spanish major, who had traveled to Mexico for three weeks, taking a few classes and living with a host family. She was at the time an intern at a multicultural center, where she could use Spanish daily.
Task #1: Listening while shopping at El Mercado Central in Minneapolis
Meghan spoke with a woman in the bakery discussing how to make and decorate pan de muerto, a traditional type of holiday bread. She used the speaking strategies of seeking an opportunity to use the language in an authentic setting, asking for clarification, and asking native speakers to speak slowly while conducting the task. She reported using the listening strategy of not translating parts of the conversation word-for-word, but rather trying to focus on the general meaning instead. The task was consistent with her preference for extroversion and that of being an auditory learning. In terms of cultural strategies, she chose to spend time with the locals and expose herself to the culture, and then debrief with family and friends about her experience afterwards, as a means for processing the information that she obtained throughout the experience. She registered her motivation to be very high given that the task was in public and in a high-pressure situation. She was proud of the outcome and her motivation skyrocketed upon the successful completion of this task.
Task #2: Reading a chapter from an English novel translated into Spanish
She had a visual style preference, and by seeing the language in written form, she was using her ability to learn visually to increase her knowledge of the language. A language learning strategy that she used consistent with her visual preference was writing the English word above the unknown Spanish word, so she was able to see both words and picture them in her mind in order to retain them. She also relied heavily on the use of bilingual reference materials in order to understand the reading. Because she was an extrovert and preferred to do something a bit more outgoing and meaningful, as well as being very impulsive, her need to be spontaneous was not fulfilled by sitting down and reading for a long period of time. She was not so motivated to take part in this task because it did not mesh with her preferred learning style. During the task, as she really began to understand the meaning of the text, her motivation increased.
Hannah, Beth, & Madeline [doing the same 2 tasks]
Hannah - 20-year-old Spanish major, 1 yr of study abroad in Argentina
Beth - 21-year-old Spanish minor with one semester in Venezuela
Madeline - 20-year-old not majoring in Spanish, just taking a Spanish class, and no study-abroad experience.
Task #1: A few minutes from the movie Volver
Since Hannah was extroverted, she asked questions for clarification. Before the movie task, she asked what dialect of Spanish the characters would be speaking in to prepare her for the task. Her motivation was high throughout the task. Consistent with her preference to be detail-oriented, she paid attention to the smaller details instead of the main idea, which was evident in her summary.
Beth was much more introverted, and tried to guess the meaning of words or phrases she didn’t understand in the movie or look them up in a dictionary rather than ask for clarification or watch the movie clip again. She reported preferring to listen for the overall idea and use context clues for clarification. While summarizing the movie clip, her motivation dropped significantly. She did not have Hannah’s the level of vocabulary control, and so she used a lot of circumlocution to get the main idea across. Her culture learning strategies benefited much more from her experience abroad than her language strategies in general, she reported. Also, Venezuelans were very sympathetic speakers and helped her throughout the conversation, almost never correcting her errors. She apparently had used a lot of circumlocution, facial expressions, and gestures.
Madeline had a global style preference and her principle strategy was to try to get the main idea from the movie clip. But understanding the movie clip required many important details with very few context clues, so she had a difficult time understanding and summarizing it, which decreased her motivation significantly.
Task #2: Reading the final chapter from the book Crepúsculo, and writing a short summary of the chapter
For the reading task, Hannah was equally as detail-oriented. She said that while reading the chapter, when she came to a word that she didn’t understand she would ask her boyfriend, a native speaker of Spanish, for clarification. She had similar motivation and confidence in her summary of the chapter as well. She mentioned that if there were phrases or expressions that she could not understand, she would use other detailed context clues to understand the meaning. While writing the summary, Hannah’s motivation remained high because she was equipped with the vocabulary to summarize the chapter successfully. She also reported that due to her total immersion in the language for two semesters, she could pick up much easier on smaller details in the language, rather than just the main idea.
Trish
Senior, majoring in German studies, with junior year abroad in Germany and experience as a Concordia Language Village summer counselor
Task #1: Reading a chapter from Harry Potter und der Feuerkelch, a story she was familiar with so she could concentrate on noticing new and difficult grammar forms and their correct use
Reading played to her visual strengths. Being able to see the words spelled out for her made it easier to recall new words that she had just learned, as well as to discern meanings based on word analysis of compound nouns. She also used the strategy of getting the general gist of the paragraph before consulting a dictionary, consistent with her global and random-intuitive style preferences. Because Harry Potter was a linear story, she was able to satisfy her need for step-by-step processing of the text as well, while at the same time still being able to focus on the larger picture of understanding the whole story rather than each individual word. She also reported that when she came across a passage that she found difficult, she would read it a second time silently, focusing on the sentence or sentences that were giving her trouble, and then repeat them out loud to see if that helped her decipher the meaning, which it did. So she was catering to an auditory approach to a visual task. She used this strategy in tandem with underlining structures and words that she found difficult or particularly wanted to remember. Her motivation decreased as she progressed in the task because the task called for strategies that she had not practiced in a long while. However, once she completed the task, she felt the strong desire to continue the reading on her own to finish the story. She enjoyed this task because it let her focus on big-picture ideas rather than minor grammar and vocabulary issues that often tripped her up when writing or speaking.
Task #2: Writing an email to a native German friend living in Berlin
She started with high motivation and saw it decrease significantly, both because of the need to refer to grammar books and a dictionary, but also because of the unpleasant issue in the letter (letting a friend down regarding the replacement of broken sunglasses).
This task pushed her out of her learning comfort zone because it required her to be both concerned with minute details as well as being certain that her message would be understood and culturally appropriate. The task was inconsistent with her preference to be extroverted because in order to compose the email message, after preparing a draft without reference materials, she had to double-check every sentence, using a grammar reference book and a dictionary. Her diligence in checking the grammar and syntax of her work was directly related to her motivation to complete the task.
She and the recipient of the letter had worked together in the German Village at Concordia Language Villages the past summer, where the focus of their teaching was on the spoken word rather than in writing. Her friend had never seen her written German before, and she was very nervous that her friend would not be able to understand her written message. She was afraid that if she did not put adequate time and effort into her grammar, the friend would comment to her co-workers that although her spoken language was strong, her written grammar was weak. Another concern she had was cultural. She found that in general, Germans could be very direct and often say exactly what they meant. Coming from a “Minnesota Nice” background, she discovered that she was reluctant to communicate bad news. After reading her message a second time, she feared that her friend would not understand why she could not find the sunglasses. These concerns made this task much harder for her because she wanted to tweak each detail until she felt her message would be understood in the way that she intended.
Samantha
Senior, in 4th-year Japanese, with a trip to Japan in 2006.
Task #1: Reading a Japanese text and writing short answer to comprehension questions
Because she was introverted, she was comforted by being able to sit alone in her room and read and write. However, the fact that she would have to participate in a group and read her answers aloud in class after handing in her assignment produced a high level of anxiety. Also, in doing this task, her tactile and auditory preferences emerged, as she flicked her pencil around a lot while writing and liked hearing the background noise of her TV while she was thinking. In terms of language strategies, she looked up words that she didn’t understand in a dictionary and re-reading difficult passages in order to try to cement the meaning in her mind. Also, she tried to summarize what was happening in the text in English in the margins of the composition, and she drew from her summarized/translated material in writing her answers to the questions. She registered her overall motivation for this task as medium-low, given her anxiety about reading her answers in class and her misgivings about her capabilities in Japanese.
Task #2: Watching a video clip of her favorite Japanese celebrity on a talk show and trying to understand it
Since she was more global than particular, she focused more on getting the gist/understanding the general context of what the people said rather than translating it word-for-word in her head. Also, since she was more open than closure-oriented, doing a task such as this without regard for a deadline or a grade was pleasant, and she felt that the stress-free nature of the task led to greater language acquisition. As for strategies, she listened for the general context rather than specifics, consistent with her global style preference, using the speakers’ tone of voice, gestures, and body language to try and figure out what they were saying, and pausing the video to look up new words or re-watching it if the speech was too fast to be understood. In general, her motivation for this task remained high, since she had chosen it, it was a fun task due to the subject matter, and she wasn’t being graded on it or given a time limit in which to listen to it.
Rochelle
Senior, majoring in Asian Languages and Literature, and prior Spanish study in HS
Task #1: Watching a Japanese drama without using subtitles, with the goal to understand as much of the episode as possible
The visuals for this show were so powerful that she could use the strategy of watching without worrying about catching every word because she knew that they would show plot while they talked about it. She felt the sharpener in her in conflict with the leveler, since she was using the strategy of refraining from dictionary use, while a part of her wanted to check her dictionary to discover what a certain word actually meant, or at least pause to write down all of the words that needed to be further addressed. Some words stuck in her memory, and so she looked them up that night to discover that even though they had repeated ninkyou (generosity, heroism) and koi (intention, request) many times, learning the meaning of the words did not lead to secret “aha!” moments regarding the plot.
Another instance where she needed to rely on a less preferred learning style during the listening task was when it came to open versus closure-oriented learning. Having no script or translation for the story ahead of time meant that she had to allow a lot of openness toward the assignment. After getting over the fact that she wasn’t going to understand everything and knowing that it did not count against her to miss some details, it really wasn’t so bad to simply try to let the video drama “soak in.” She found it an interesting approach to, in her words, “abolish an attempt at complete accuracy and understanding,” though she did wonder whether she was laughing about the same thing as intended in the show.
The task kept her attentive and curious during the entire show. The motivation to understand the drama was purely to increase personal enjoyment. As she put it, “No comprehension check would be turned in, no extra credit would be earned, but I still felt like watching another episode and doing it again after finishing.”
Task #2: Writing a 1½-page letter in Japanese to a classmate
This task allowed Rochelle every opportunity to take the time and be picky. She reported that the literal, closure-oriented side of her “rejoiced at this, making extensive use of the dictionary and even doing a once-over check to make sure that all of the ten-tens were in place (denotes voiced consonant).” As part of what she referred to as her “language ego,” she found that her drawings and smiley facts took on more of a Japanese style. During both of the tasks, she reported that Japanese was instantly used as her primary language for speaking to herself, muttering questions or comments just as naturally as if it were being done in English. She reported that this task held some extrinsic motivation in that she was replying to a person’s letter and knew that it was going to be read. This did serve to increase the desire for accuracy and the connection of it to a class activity, having a partner with whom to share.
Sandra
Junior, in Spanish Studies, desire to become a Spanish teacher.
Task: Writing a response to a question which involved a lot of usually avoided grammar: “If you could pick any superpower, what would you choose and why?”
Consistent with her auditory style preference, whenever she came upon a difficult sentence, she sounded it out in her head in order to make sure that it was correct before continuing writing. This was especially true when she wrote, “Si podría escoger cualquier superpotencia, me gustaría obtener la superpotencia de poder saber todos los lenguajes del mundo” (‘If I could pick any superpower, I would like to have the superpower to be able to know all the languages of the world’). [Note that the first verb is incorrectly in the conditional – rather than in the subjunctive form.] There were many aspects of this sentence that made it difficult for her – determining whether to use the subjunctive, choosing between tener (‘to have’) or obtener (‘to obtain’) and between lenguaje and lengua. and justify my choice. [She chose wrong in both cases.]
She reports that her closure-oriented approach manifested itself in that she planned out what she was going to write before writing. For instance, she thought about which superpower she really would want, planned out what she was going to say, what vocabulary she would need to know, and what verb forms would be necessary in order to get her point across. She also made sure that she knew beforehand that superpotencia was ‘superpower.’
She reported planning out what she was going to write, monitored how her writing was going, and checked to see how well her writing reflected what she wanted to say. She reviewed all of her writing two separate times to make sure there were not any more errors that she had missed and that her point was well-made. She also looked for a different way to express an idea that she was not sure of. For example, she wrote sería más útil (‘it would be more useful’) because she was not sure how to say it would be more helpful, and did not have a dictionary.
While writing, her motivation stayed pretty much the same throughout the entire activity (3 out of 5). She had relatively stable motivation before completing the task because it seemed entertaining and beneficial to her Spanish learning. Although she reported that the grammar was difficult, once she had planned everything out, carrying out the task was apparently “simple.”
Sherry
Senior, Biochemistry major, a Taiwanese Mandarin heritage speaker with advanced skills at the time of the study.
Task #1: Reading a news article from an online news site
She had no idea what the topic of the article was, and she began reading it right away without planning how to read it, without getting any materials to supplement her understanding, and without understanding everything right away. So, she deployed an open approach, although she had described herself as preferring more closure-oriented learning. She read the article first to get the main idea and then read it again to pick up details, looking up words that she didn’t recognize. She eventually went over every word in the article, thus moving from a global start to a more detail-oriented analysis of the article. She reported being comfortable with both visual and auditory approaches to learning, and in this case she sounded the words out in her head as she read. She also deduced the function of some words that she did not know but which came up repeatedly. From studying the organization of the article and context clues, she was able to figure out that a particular three-character phrase was a noun and the main subject of the story. After her second reading, she looked up the phrase in an online dictionary and read the English definition of the noun phrase. Employing these two additional language strategies greatly enhanced her understanding of the article and actually raised her motivational temperature. After finishing this task, she summarized the story verbally, and realized that she tended to employ a synthesizing method of learning and focused mostly on the themes and similarities in the parts of the story.
When she first began to read the article, she reported having a fairly low motivational temperature. She didn’t view reading as one of her strengths and thus lacked confidence in herself. However, she recognized that this was important practice for learning Chinese. Because she didn’t think she would do well on this task and wasn’t doing homework for a class, she didn’t pay attention to the setup and only considered the online dictionary as a guide for completing the task. Even though she wasn’t getting graded on this activity, she was still pretty anxious about completing this task since she really hadn’t read any Chinese since her class the previous Spring. Though she didn’t expect too much success, she wanted to do well to prove to myself that she could still read Chinese. Her motivational temperature increased while she was completing the task though because she found that she really did understand enough of the article to get the gist of the story.
Task #2: Watching an episode of a Chinese T.V. show with only Chinese subtitles
Before beginning this task, she was pretty confident in her abilities and was interested in completing the task because she often employed listening strategies when studying Chinese and could understand everything her teacher said. The T.V. show that she chose was a drama series (公主小妹) that she had heard about but had not had time to watch yet, so she eagerly anticipated completing this activity. As a strategy for enhancing her viewing of the show, she looked up the synopsis of the drama in English so that she would have a general idea of the protagonists and setting. Interest in the story made her motivational temperature go even higher. All the same, she was a bit anxious about completing the task because, as with the reading task, she hadn’t really tested her Chinese listening skills since taking a Chinese class the previous Spring, and hadn’t watched a movie or show in Chinese for at least the previous year. Lastly, she reported that she didn’t speak very often with her parents and when she did, they usually adjusted their language to her comprehension level.
The opening scene of the show was of a girl daydreaming out loud, and thus she couldn’t rely on visual action to help her figure out what she was thinking about. The dialogue was a little fast, so she watched it twice to pick up the premise of the episode. Watching this show required both her visual and auditory senses. Throughout the episode, she found myself predicting what would happen next and relying on the characters’ speech tones to make her predictions. Thus, she was being intuitive in her approach and focusing on specific details here and there. While she worried about her ability to keep up with the dialogue, she did so fairly well. She paid attention to the characters’ facial expressions and other means of nonverbal communication to help her understand the story and mood, as well as other listening strategies such as the rise and fall of speech to detect anxiety or anger in speech. As such, her motivational temperature throughout the entire task was extremely high, and consequently, she looked forward to completing a similar task in the future, perhaps continuing with the T.V. show.
Although Sherry was of Taiwanese heritage, the Taiwanese show that she watched had some certain cultural values that she identified with and others not. For instance, she found herself admiring the main character’s perseverance to earn enough money to accomplish her aspirations. So this was a shared trait between her and the Taiwanese character. She reported that having the skills to recognize such similarities and differences was something that she most definitely would employ in a host country, perhaps as a means of starting a conversation or making friends. Another culture-learning strategy that she found herself employing was to examine how nonverbal communication was used not just to convey information to the audience, but also how it was used among the characters. Some communication strategies, such as the use of personal space, were apparent in the way the characters refrained from hugging each other. Eye contact was made when characters spoke to one another, and the forms of address between people of different socioeconomic status indicated that formality was valued in the culture.
Bethany
Junior, major in Elementary Education, last Spanish study 4 years previously in H.S.
Task: Attending a Spanish conversation group session for 45 minutes with six others at a café near campus
Bethany saw her decision to attend a conversation group despite not having taken a Spanish class for four years as evidence of her preference to be extroverted and impulsive. She got to engage in a social environment, meet new people, and even visit with a friend.
She reported understanding the gist of what was said to her, and used the strategy of asking for clarification when she did not. She also reported being able to communicate although as she put it, “I often had to creatively express myself” (e.g., using an English word, using a Spanish synonym, or even inventing a Spanish word). She also used the strategy of asking for help when she could not remember specific words. Her motivation was low at the outset but increased as she got into the task. She reported being more concerned about communicating meaning than about making mistakes, revealing her impulsive learning style preference. Receiving feedback – whether positive (a nod or smile when she used phrases correctly) or negative (a correction on a grammar mistake) – was highly motivating for her. Several of her preferred strategies were utilized, such as asking others either to repeat themselves, provide a word definition, or slow down the speed of their conversation when she did not understand. As a result of this social atmosphere, by the time she had finished the task, she had a strong desire to complete a similar task in the future.
John
18-year-old male chemical engineering major. From Dalian, Northeastern China. Arrived in the US 2½ months prior. Began learning English in elementary school, and included a 4-month language-intensive training school before leaving China.
Task: To describe one of his happiest memories from both China and from the United States, and then responding to follow-up questions to help him describe himself more fully
John’s closure-oriented style became apparent in his strong desire to know the purpose of the task, thus giving him control over it and eliminating ambiguity. Consistent with his visual style preference, when he couldn’t remember the word for “torque,” John reported mentally picturing the PowerPoint he had viewed during his physics class in order to see and remember the word. While he reported lower motivation at the beginning of the task because of uncertainty as to what he was to do, as well as anxiety at his ability to do it, his motivation went way up as he got into the task. For one thing, he ended up talking about the concepts he was learning in his physics class. As an impulsive learner, John was more likely to utter an incorrect word or phrase first, often correcting himself after the error had been made. At one point in the interview he said “more of the time” and quickly corrected it to “much of the time.”
Hannah
Fifteen-year-old girl, in 9th grade. Studying Spanish as a school requirement and a personal desire, with 6-year-old sister in Spanish immersion program.
Task: Completing a 20-question quiz on words from entry-level Spanish textbooks, with half the items asking for an English equivalent for a Spanish word, and half the reverse.
The vocabulary quiz seemed simple to Hannah. She explained that to complete the activity, she first went through the list of words, circling the ones she felt she knew least. Next, she went through and responded to the questions that she was most certain of. At this point she had to examine the words which she did not believe she knew. At this point, she said that she used the strategy of visualization to try and recognize where she may have seen these words in the past. Being a visual learner this strategy was very much within her comfort zone. She was able to figure out the answers to various items, and those that she could not come up with lead her to feeling frustrated. She stated that she could remember where each word had been in her book. Her ability to recall this was clearly linked to her being highly visual learner. As a result of her ability to remember the words, her motivation remained high throughout the entire activity. When she had issues remembering the definition of vocabulary words, she would make an effort to recall if she had used the word in class or if it had been in a worksheet in class.
Claire
Senior, Spanish Studies Major
Task: Watching twenty minutes of a movie in Spanish without subtitles
This task was somewhat challenging, but all the same she was highly motivated because she enjoyed the movie and listening was one of her better language skills. Her confidence in this task increased her motivation. The physical set up for the task was motivating because she was able to watch the movie alone in peace and quiet where she could stay focused. A language strategy that she used while listening to the movie was to listen for the main point instead of getting stuck on smaller details, an example of a task where she preferred to be more global in her learning style. She also used a lot of contextual clues in the dialogue and the movie itself in order to reinforce her understanding of the plot. In addition, she tried to think in Spanish in order to understand the movie rather than to think in English and translate what she was hearing in Spanish into English. As another strategy, she listened for words that were familiar to her and that she knew she understood. She reported staying relatively motivated throughout the duration of the task.
Eva
Senior, English major, currently in 4th-semester Chinese
Task #1: Translating a paragraph from English into Chinese, a task in a current lesson so that the grammar and vocabulary were roughly at her level
Eva found herself dealing with each sentence in a paragraph as a separate unit, and then breaking down the sentences into smaller parts, translating them, and then piecing the parts back together again. Use of these strategies was consistent with her preference for being detail-oriented rather than global – instead of going for the general meaning in her translation, she tried to include all aspects of the original. Given her visual style preference, the visual aspect of it helped her to feel more comfortable performing the task as well as being more motivated. Since it was a task without a time limit, she could look back and reflect on her answers as much as she wanted, ensuring that they were correct and that she had written exactly what she had intended.
Her motivation fluctuated some, since on the plus side she was certain that she would do well given that the whole paragraph would be made up of phrases and terms that she had covered previously in class. On the minus side, however, the subject of the paragraph (a narrative about a Chinese student attending college) was not overly interesting. While performing the task, her motivation was relatively high since she felt that the task would be beneficial to her language development in that it would aid her overall agility at moving between the two languages. After completing the task, she was fairly encouraged by her performance. She had known most of the vocabulary and characters required to translate the paragraph into Chinese, and didn’t struggle much with her overall comprehension or use of grammar.
Task #2: Watching the Chinese-language film A World Without Thieves (Tiānxià Wú Zéi) without using subtitles, having read a brief plot summary in English beforehand in order to better follow the action
Eva reported that using the strategy of breaking things down didn’t work for her on this task so she abandoned the strategy. If she focused on trying to understand every aspect of an utterance in the film, she found that she would end up missing the next one. So, she switched to a more global style of listening, in which she focused on getting the main idea of each phrase which involved some style-stretching out of her comfort zone. Nonetheless, this approach ultimately made it more enjoyable for her because it felt like she was actually watching a movie rather than just doing a listening comprehension exercise. As she got more involved with the story, her motivation to understand increased because she wanted to know what was happening. Because the film was fairly action-oriented and had a limited number of characters, it was easier to follow than she had thought it would be. However, as expected she did have trouble understanding quite a bit of the dialogue without the help of subtitles. This was due to a combination of unfamiliar vocabulary and the speed of native speakers talking to one another. After she completed the task, she did not feel that she had comprehended all that much, but she was still encouraged by the fact that she had not been completely lost and had mostly been able to follow the general story line.
Her overall motivation in completing the film task was at about the same level as it was for the first task, although for very different reasons. She was not very confident in her ability to understand much of the film, since she considered listening to be one of her weaker points. She was concerned that the actors would be speaking too fast, and that she wouldn’t even be able to pick up on the words or phrases that she was familiar with. However, she was quite interested in performing the task. The summary of the plot made the film sound interesting, and she was eager to see exactly how well she could follow the story line. She also felt that doing this task would be beneficial to her language learning, since it would allow her to better gauge her comprehension of the language outside of a highly structured classroom environment.
Nicole
Senior, majoring in Spanish and Portuguese
Task #1: Attending a Portuguese conversation hour and interacting with fellow students of Portuguese and a native speaker
She was highly motivated before attending the conversation hour. Her self-confidence, however, was not very high since many others had better Portuguese speaking skills than she did, which made her feel self-conscious and caused her to employ social strategies which she would have preferred to avoid, such as pretending to understand so as to not feel left out. She nonetheless used effective speaking strategies such as imitating speech which sounded particularly idiomatic and asking for help from her conversation partner. Since she tried to avoid thinking in English, she found herself asking for the equivalents of Spanish words and made guesses about Portuguese words based on her Spanish vocabulary (e.g., converting the suffix –ción to –ção and hoping that it fit with the common pattern of relationships between Spanish and Portuguese nouns and that it was actually a word). She viewed using translation techniques from Spanish rather than from English as “cheating.” She also used the strategy of rehearsal before saying anything, consistent with a more reflective approach to language performance. This bolstered her confidence when she did speak, but the strategy was sometimes detrimental in that by the time that she had decided how she wanted to contribute to the conversation, the speakers may already have moved on to another topic.
She found that while she spent the majority of her time listening, she was also bolstering her comprehension through visual stimuli, such as looking at the expressions on her speaking partners’ faces and the gestures which they used. In addition, she catered to her kinesthetic style preference (reportedly as high as her visual preference) by putting her legs up on the chair and playing with her pen and cell phone. She viewed making herself physically comfortable as a strategy which influenced her affect and made her less concerned about committing errors, since her body language was broadcasting that it was a casual encounter.
Her detail-oriented style preference also emerged in that she noticed details in the language, such as whether someone chose to use the preterit or the imperfect tense, and she tried to analyze why they had chosen that tense and which tense she would have used in that context. At times she missed what was being said in the conversation because she was lost in her own language analysis. Although she considered herself more closure-oriented, she felt herself becoming more open during this task because it was in an informal, non-academic context. She could relax more, knowing that she was not going to be tested on what she was hearing so she did not have to worry about comprehending everything. She started having fun and stopped comparing her language skills to those of others so much. Her motivation was high after completing this activity and she looked forward to doing it again the next week.
Task #2: Reading three articles about the musician Caetano Veloso and the Tropicalismo movement assigned in her “Popular Music in Portuguese Speaking Cultures” class and preparing responses to questions provided by the instructor
Before staring this task, Nicole was feeling relatively motivated, since she considered reading one of her stronger skills and the topic of the articles was one which interested her and that she already had some background knowledge about. It did not take long, however, for her motivation to decrease. She found the text to be very dense, with seemingly endless sentences and a ratio of unknown words far above the frustration level. The intended audience seemed to be those already well-versed in Brazilian music, not as an introduction to students. She realized that at the pace she was reading, it would take her about eight hours to finish the articles, so she began to panic a little because she needed to be prepared to discuss them that afternoon.
Her strategies varied as she went through the readings. She began by underlining words which she did not know, so she could look them up later. Then she decided that she needed to know the definitions for some of the keys words to assist in comprehension, or her reading efforts would be futile. Consequently, she began looking up words in the dictionary, but this was quite time-consuming, so she switched strategies entirely and skimmed through all of the articles, only looking for one or two main ideas in each paragraph, just to get an idea on what each one was about. Then she read the discussion questions and used the rough outlines which she had created to search out the specific information that she needed. What motivated her to use her time as efficiently as possible was the prospect of feedback from a substitute professor whom had heard was very demanding and expected students to come to class well prepared. So, she put in extra effort in order to feel confident in her ability to contribute to the class discussion.
Since her preparation time was limited, she was forced to stretch outside of her usual learning style preferences. She approached the articles in a more global manner, ignoring details entirely, except for when they pertained to a specific question. She also had to synthesize the information so that she could provide the gist of each article. She reported it being difficult to override her analytic preference and to refrain from worrying about the numerous unfamiliar words.
Her motivation increased after attending class because she found out that her classmates had experienced the same difficulties that she had. She was also able to participate quite successfully in the class discussion and made the happy realization that even though she felt that she had rushed herself too much, she had understood the articles more than she had credited herself with, and that she was even able to explain some of the key ideas to others.
Emma
Junior, female, Spanish Studies major, living experiences in Spain and Venezuela
Task: Conversation about the pronunciation of vowels and about syllabication with her native Spanish-speaking friend in order to help her prepare for an oral exam in a Spanish Phonetics class
She felt relatively self-confident, relaxed, and motivated prior to the task, due to past experiences being immersed in the language abroad. The approach she took was concrete-sequential, focusing first on pronunciation and then on syllabification rules, which helped her feel more motivated because these specifications felt like a to-do list, with objectives to follow.
At the beginning of the task, her motivation dropped a little as she and her friend began to talk. She realized that improving her speech was more difficult than expected because pronunciation was something that tended to be second-nature and not something that most people had to think about. While conversing, she reported coming across words with vowel combinations that were more difficult than others. At these moments, her strategy was to have her friend repeat the words a few times so that she could mimic his pronunciation. While her friend was repeating the words, she paid attention to the similarities and differences among the various vowel combinations in Spanish that were difficult for me.
She then moved on to syllabification rules, and given her preference for closure, she asked her friend to explain rules that were new to her and to give examples. Towards the end of the conversation, Emma noticed that her pronunciation was improving and beginning to flow with more ease, causing her motivation to increase. She reported that this accomplishment led her to feel more even highly motivated in regards to other similar speaking tasks because she had enjoyed the experience.
Sonya
15-year-old female with 2 years of HS Spanish, several short vacations in Mexico
Task: Five minutes to learn eight new Spanish words and then take a quiz on her ability to recover these words
Sonya read the words over and over silently, memorizing the spelling as well. The student researcher (her older sister, in this case) noted that on the language strategy survey Sonya had indicated that she liked to write words down and find relations between new words and the words that she already knew, a strategy that she did not use with this task. She also reported that she was quizzing herself back and forth in order for two reasons: 1) to perform word recognition successfully (most effective in vocabulary-matching activities), and 2) to be able to produce the correct vocabulary word from memory (which was how typical vocabulary quizzes were performed). These strategies made use of Sonya’s strong sharpener preference, by focusing so intently on spelling, and she did spell all of the vocabulary words correctly. Her motivation to do the task started high, decreased slightly when she saw the actual words, but ended very high as well.
References
Cohen, A. D. (2003). The learner’s side of foreign language learning: Where do styles, strategies, and tasks meet? International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 41(4), 279-291.
Cohen, A. D., & Dörnyei, Z. (2001). Taking my Motivational Temperature on a Language Task. Minneapolis, MN: Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition, University of Minnesota.
Cohen, A. D., Oxford, R. L., & Chi, J. C. (2002a). The Language Strategy Use Survey. Minneapolis, MN: Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition, University of Minnesota.
Cohen, A. D., Oxford, R. L., & Chi, J. C. (2002b). Learning Style Survey: Assessing Your Own Learning Styles. Minneapolis, MN: Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition, University of Minnesota.
(Note: The three instruments are available in this website under, "Publications, Learner Styles and Strategies.")
[1] Link to the syllabus for "Practical Language Learning for International Communication," Fall 2010.