Teaching "Learning Strategies" : a research on the effect of teaching explicitly versus inexplicitly

Abstract

With the change of the social demands, the goals of learning English by Japanese learners have had wide variance. The use of computers made writers easier to change the organization of what they have previously written. The general writers' focus might be given more on the organization than before. The use of faxes eased the interchange of tables, figures, graphs, etc., which in turn provides increased opportunity to discuss over these materials by telephone. These demands might even change the definition of intelligence (eg.Azuma, 1990), suppose intellingence is defined in terms of social needs. If the output, i.e. the goals of learning English change, then approachs and methods for language teaching should also change. Learning of language-learning strategies, in this sense, should be focussed on for the reasons of their flexibility, applicability, and efficiency for the changing demands of learners in these circumustances. In this paper, styles of teaching, "learning strategies" were compared in the aim of identifying critical factors in teaching them successfully. Five groups of students majoring in different subjects in two universities were given an questionnaire and the reasons for the increased rate of the use of learning strategies were discussed in terms of the transfer of previous learning experience and students' motivation.