3.3 Methods to Help Learners Develop Learning Strategies
Key Takeaways
- Learning strategies build learners' independence, distinct from scaffolding that supports a single task.
- Predicting, estimating, and guessing from context help learners approach unfamiliar subject material with a personal stake in the outcome.
- Encouraging risk-taking — not worrying about mistakes — matters because fear of language errors can stop learners from attempting to explain subject content at all.
- Study skills such as using a dictionary, the internet, or reading around a subject concept give learners tools to use outside the lesson.
- Reviewing vocabulary and ideas, and encouraging learner-generated questions and problem solving, build retention and depth over time.
3.3 Methods to Help Learners Develop Learning Strategies
Beyond scaffolding a single task, CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) lesson delivery also aims to build learners' own learning strategies — habits and skills that let learners tackle new subject content and new language independently, in this lesson and in every lesson afterwards. Where scaffolding in section 3.2 is support the teacher builds into a specific task, the strategies in this section are skills the teacher deliberately trains learners to use for themselves.
The strategies
| Strategy | Classroom example |
|---|---|
| Encouraging predicting and estimating skills | Before revealing recorded data, asking learners to estimate how much the temperature will rise given a described weather trend |
| Encouraging personalising of content | Asking learners to describe their own local environment when studying ecosystems in general |
| Encouraging risk-taking — not worrying about mistakes | Praising a learner who attempts a full sentence answer with an error over one who stays silent to avoid making a mistake |
| Encouraging guessing from context | Teaching learners to infer the meaning of arid from the surrounding text about deserts, rather than reaching for a dictionary immediately |
| Helping learners set their own learning goals | Having learners write down one thing they want to understand better by the end of a topic on forces |
| Helping develop study skills (dictionaries, the internet, reading around subject concepts) | Teaching learners to check a bilingual dictionary for a technical term, or to find a simplified web article on a subject topic |
| Encouraging use of visual prompts to aid memory | Using diagrams, timelines, or labelled images of the water cycle that learners can refer back to |
| Helping learners take quick and accurate notes | Modelling how to jot down only key words and abbreviations while watching a demonstration, rather than writing full sentences |
| Encouraging reviewing of vocabulary and ideas | Opening a lesson with a quick recap of the previous lesson's key terms before moving on to new content |
| Encouraging questions and problem solving | Building in time for learners to ask 'why' and troubleshoot a problem themselves instead of the teacher immediately supplying the answer |
Strategies for approaching new content
Several of these strategies help learners engage with unfamiliar subject material before and while it is presented. Encouraging predicting and estimating skills asks learners to commit to a guess before they see the answer — in a science lesson on levers, a teacher might ask learners to estimate how much force is needed to lift a weight at different distances from a pivot before they measure it, which gives them a personal stake in the result. Encouraging guessing from context trains learners to use surrounding text, images, or cognates to work out an unfamiliar word's meaning rather than stopping the lesson to look it up, keeping momentum in a reading task. Encouraging use of visual prompts to aid memory — labelled diagrams, timelines, colour-coded charts — gives learners a durable, non-verbal reference they can return to when the spoken or written language of a concept has faded from memory. Helping learners take quick and accurate notes teaches learners to capture the key words of a demonstration or explanation in real time, rather than either writing nothing or trying and failing to write down every word the teacher says.
Strategies for engagement and independence
Other strategies build learners' ownership of their own learning. Encouraging personalising of content — connecting a general topic to a learner's own life or surroundings — increases both interest and the chance the content will be remembered. Encouraging risk-taking, and specifically not worrying about mistakes, is essential in a language-plus-content classroom: a learner who is afraid of making an English error will often stay silent rather than attempt to explain a subject concept, so how a teacher responds to imperfect attempts shapes how much learners are willing to try. Helping learners set their own learning goals shifts some responsibility for progress onto the learner rather than leaving it entirely with the teacher. Helping develop study skills — such as using a dictionary, searching the internet for a simplified explanation, or reading more widely around a subject concept — gives learners tools they can use outside the lesson, when the teacher is not there to scaffold for them.
Strategies for review and extension
A final pair of strategies supports retention and depth. Encouraging reviewing of vocabulary and ideas — a short recap at the start or end of a lesson — repeats content and language enough times that they become secure rather than remembered only briefly. Encouraging questions and problem solving builds the habit of learners generating their own 'why' and 'how' questions and working towards answers, rather than only receiving information — for example, a teacher who lets learners debate for themselves why a bridge design failed in a case study, before confirming or correcting their reasoning, is training this strategy directly.
Combining strategies across a lesson
Most CLIL lessons draw on several of these ten strategies in sequence rather than only one. A geography lesson on rainfall patterns might open with learners predicting and estimating how much rain a named region receives, move into a reading text where learners guess unfamiliar vocabulary from context, use a visual prompt — a labelled rainfall map — as a reference point throughout, and ask learners to take quick notes of the key figures as they are presented. Later in the same lesson, learners might be asked to personalise the content by comparing the studied region's rainfall to their own local climate, and to set a personal goal, such as being able to explain one cause of the pattern by the end of the week. The lesson might close with a review of the vocabulary introduced, and an open invitation for learners to ask their own questions about anything still unclear. None of these strategies depends on the others being present, but a teacher who plans for several of them across a single lesson gives learners repeated, varied opportunities to build independence, rather than relying on one technique alone to carry the whole lesson.
In a lesson on weather patterns, before showing the actual recorded data, a teacher asks learners to guess how much rainfall a region receives per year based on its climate description. Which learning strategy is this?
A teacher tells learners not to worry if their spoken answer contains a grammar mistake, and praises them for attempting a full explanation. This best illustrates which strategy?
Which activity most directly helps learners develop the study skill of finding subject information for themselves?