Three adult ESL students in a private setting participated in this case study, which investigated the effects of teaching students through strategy instruction, to adopt learning strategies that matched their individual learning style. I designed the training to draw attention to 16 learning strategies, that learners could chose from, according to their VARK (visual, aural, read and write, kinesthetic) profile. Instruction was provided in the context of an intermediate level 1 class, for a weekly three hour class. The focus of the study was to gain knowledge of cognition, metacognition and apply that knowledge to the use of personalised learning strategies. The goal was to then apply these strategies to facilitate learning a new verb tense, the present perfect. The training provided opportunities for practice, in both the learning strategies and the linguistic content. This study is a descriptive case study and not an experimental study. Therefore, in order to describe the contributions of strategy instruction, as revealed by the data, I employed a number of procedures. Pretest and postest results were analysed and showed a significant increase in the ability of students exposed to the training to correctly use the present perfect in context. Interview and questionnaire data were used to complement the test score data. It appears that strategy instruction is a factor that contributed to the score improvement and, because strategy instruction entails a number of elements, it is the combination of these elements such as the selection and use of appropriate strategies, cognitive and metacognitive awareness, knowledge of self, and practice in context that contributed to the score gains.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.82687 |
| Date | January 2004 |
| Creators | Bourgeois, Sophie |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of Second Language Education.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002209453, proquestno: AAIMR12701, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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