Chapter 11: Language Learning Strategies

Under the "Suggestions for ESL Instructors" section, I picked out a few that I felt were most important according to our current issues involved in education, particularly in the field of ESL.  With all the politics, personal biases, differences in a range of things, etc., it's quite difficult to have all these people in one room trying to learn the same thing!  Which is why I believe that these three suggestions are the most important and have reason to be addressed. 
3. "..Some teachers globally classify each student as an 'A' student or a 'C' student, or as a 'quiet person' or a 'talkative person'... Look more closely at eacho f your ESL students regarding the features of 'good language learners' listed earlier..."
     This is an important suggestion because labeling students, especially ESL students, based on what we know about them (which isn't much much, due to the language barrier and cultural differences) is actually deabilitating to their learning English, or in learning to live in a new culture in general.
5. "You can teach students to orchestrate their use of strategies by having them systematically combine and use strategies relevant to the ESL task at hand.  For example, begin with a metacognitive strategy (such as planning for the task), then unite a cognitive with a social strategy (analyzing or practicing expressions in cooperation with other students), and finally combine a metacognitive strategy and an affective strategy (such as self-evaluating progress and self-rewarding for good performance)." 
     Creating relevance in each lesson provides students a reason to learn more about the content, situations where they would actually use this knowledge, and encourages engagement more.  Utilizing metacognitive, social, and affective strategies includes different ways to grasp whatever is being taught in the lesson.  Using all three of these for a task is a process, one that requires each to be scaffolded onto the other so that the student benefits in the result.
8. "Pay attention to the range of factors influencing strategy use among your ESL students and those you can personally affect...You can control the nature of the language tasks in the ESL classroom, and you have a great deal of influence on students' motivation level.  Take advantage of the factors that you can control, and be aware of those over which you have no control (e.g., cultural background, gender, age)."
     It is vital to bring about awareness, education, respect, and celebration on these factors that differ among several students in an ESL classroom.  They can really hurt a students' performance and overall experience in the class, not to mention their goal of learning another language and about the culture.  As ESL teachers, we must take this upon ourselves to utilize what we can control and find out more (learn more about cultural background, for instance).  With this information, we must educate others in the class so that value is paid to individual cultures that exist within the class.