Cooperative Learning,Learning Strategy Training, Multiple İntelligences

LEARNING STRATEGY TRAINING
What is learning strategy?

Learning strategies are the tecniques or devices which a learner may use to acquire knowledge.
In 1970s,the students were responsible for their own learning.In 1975 Rubin researched that good language learners had to help themselves in their own learning.And from this investigation, she identified some techniques and devices which the students can use in acquiring knowledge.
Students of foreign language are being encouraged to learn and use a lot of language learning strategies that can be used throughout the learning process. This approach is based on the belief that learning will be made easier by making students aware of lots of strategies from which they can choose during language learning and use.

What are the goals of strategy training?

• Self-diagnose their strengths and weaknesses in language learning
• Become aware of what helps them to learn the target language most efficiently
• Develop a broad range of problem-solving skills
• Experiment with familiar and unfamiliar learning strategies
• Make decisions about how to approach a language task
• Monitor and self-evaluate their performance
• Transfer successful strategies to new learning contexts
  
  Metacognitive strategies (Chamot&O’Malley)
  
  According to Chamot and O’Malley, metacognitive strategies are strategies used to plan,monitor and evaluate a learning task.They identified metacognitive strategies in two categories: cognitive and social/affective strategies
• Cognitive strategies: Learners interact and manipulate what is to be learned. (repetition,summarizing,using keywords…)
• Social/affective strategies: cooperation: working with fellow-students on language. (group working)
  
  COOPERATIVE LEARNING
  
  Cooperative learning is a successful teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject. In cooperative learning, each member of a team is responsible not only for learning what is taught but also for helping teammates learn. This situation creates an atmosphere of achievement. Students work through the assignment until all group members successfully understand and complete it. The students work for a mutual benefit so they take care of each other’s efforts.(Your success benefits me and my success benefits you.). The students recognize that all group members share a common fate. (We all sink or swim together here.) The students know that one's performance is mutually caused by oneself and one's team members. (We can not do it without you.) The students feel proud and commonly celebrate when a group member is recognized for achievement. (We all congratulate you on your accomplishment!).

ELEMENTS OF COOPERATIVE LEARNING

I)Positive Interdependence (sink or swim together): Each group member's efforts are required and obligatory for group success. Each group member has a unique contribution to common effort because of his or her resources and task responsibilities.

II) Face-to-Face Interaction (promote each other's success): This element of cooperative learning includes orally explaining how to solve problems , teaching one's knowledge to other , checking for understanding, discussing concepts being learned,connecting present with past learning .

III) Individual & Group Accountability (no hitchhiking! no social loafing): This includes keeping the group “small” as possible, giving an individual test to each student, examining students orally, observing each group and recording the frequency with which each member-contributes to the group's work. It includes also assigning one student in each group the role of checker.(The checker asks other group members to explain group answers)and having students teach what they learned to someone else.

IV) Interpersonal &Small-Group Skills :Social skills must be taught: Leadership ,decision-making ,trust-building ,communication, conflict-management skills.

V) Group Processing: Group members discuss how well they are achieving their goals and maintaining effective working relationships.They describe what member actions are helpful and not helpful, and make decisions about what behaviors to continue or change.

MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCE
TYPES OF INTELLIGENCES ACCORDİNG TO GARDNER;

• Verbal/Linguistic intelligence ("word smart")
• Logical-mathematical intelligence ("number/reasoning smart")
• Visual/Spatial intelligence ("picture smart")
• Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence ("body smart")
• Interpersonal intelligence ("people smart")
• Intrapersonal intelligence ("self smart")
• Musical/Rhytmic intelligence ("music smart")

Implications of MI theory in foreign language education;

1-Each person possesses all seven intelligences. In each person the seven intelligences function together in unique ways. Some people have high levels of functioning in all or most of the seven intelligences; a few people lack most of the basic aspects of intelligence. Most people are somewhere in the middle, with a few intelligences highly developed, most modestly developed, and one or two underdeveloped.
2- Intelligences can be developed. Gardner suggests that everyone has the capacity to develop all eight intelligences to a reasonably high level of performance with appropriate encouragement, enrichment, and instruction.
3- Intelligences work together in complex ways. No intelligence really exists by itself in life. Intelligences are always interacting with each other. For example, to cook a meal, one must read a recipe (linguistic), perhaps double it (logical-mathematical), and prepare a menu that satisfies others you may cook for (interpersonal) and yourself (intrapersonal).

How can applying MI theory help students learn better?

• Students begin to understand how they are intelligent. In Gardner's view, learning is both a social and psychological process. When students understand the balance of their own multiple intelligences they begin to manage their own learning and value their individual strengths .
• Teachers understand how students are intelligent as well as how intelligent they are.Knowing which students have the potential for strong interpersonal intelligence, for example, will help you create opportunities where the strength can be fostered in others. However, multiple intelligence theory is not intended to provide teachers with new IQ-like labels for their students.
• Students approach understanding from different angles. The problem, "What is sand?" has scientific, poetic, artistic, musical, and geographic points of entry.
• Students that exhibit comprehension through rubrics, portfolios, or demonstrations come to have an authentic understanding of achievement

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