Abstract
Language learning strategy training has attracted the attention of many researchers as well as practitioners as a means to cultivate the ability of self-directed learning. Although many studies have been conducted to investigate how and how much this strategy training will improve the quality of language learning at secondary and tertiary schools, almost no research of this kind has been done for English activities at primary schools in Japan. Given this situation, this paper reports the results and challenge of the 10 pilot lessons conducted at a public primary school in Kyoto to examine what effects English activities with such elements integrated bring about. The analysis of pre and post questionnaires to measure students' motivation and strategy use suggested that the pilot lessons had some positive effect on the students' motivation toward English study and their awareness of strategy use. Another analysis conducted on a newly developed instrument: SOLT (Strategy Orientation of Language Teaching) showed that the pilot lesson definitely differed from a regular lesson both quantitatively and qualitatively in terms of strategy instruction.
