Learning strategies are steps taken by students to enhance their own learning. Strategies are especially important for language learning because they are tools for active, self-directed involvement, which is essential for developing communicative competence. Appropriate language learning strategies result in improved proficiency and greater self-confidence. Throughout history, the best language students have used strategies ranging from naturalistic language practice techniques to analytic, rule-based strategies. Learning strategy workshops are drawing big crowds at language teachers’ conventions. Researchers are identifying, classifying, and evaluating language learning strategies, and these efforts are resulting in a steady stream of articles on the topic. 2.1.1 Definition of Learning Strategies According to Chamot (1987), “learning strategies are techniques, approaches, or deliberate actions that students take in order to facilitate the learning and recall of both linguistics and content area information”. Oxford and Nam’s (1998) study indicates that “learning strategies is a technical phrase that means any specific conscious action or behavior student takes to improve his or her own learning”. Oxford (1990) considers that “any specific action taken by the learner to make learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective, and more transferable to new situations” is a language learning strategy (LLS). Strategies are the conscious steps of behavior used by language learners to enhance the acquisition, storage, retention, recall and one of new information (Oxford & Ehrman, 1990). The concept of learning strategy is still a fuzzy one and not easy to have a final definition, though it has been over thirty years since researchers began the study of learning strategies. A summary of definitions of language learning strategies taken from the recent literature (Ellis, 1999:531) may help us have an overview of it. Chapter Two Literature Review 7 Table 2.1 Definitions of Learning Strategies Source Definitions Stern (1983)In our view strategy is best reserved for general tendencies or overall characteristics of the approach employed by the language learner, leaving techniques as the term to refer to particular forms of observable learning behavior. Weinstein and Learning strategies are the behaviors and thought that a learner Mayer (1986)engages in during learning that are intended to influence the learner’s encoding process. Rubin (1987)Learning strategies are strategies which contribute to the development of the language system which the learner constructs and affect learning directly. O’Malley and “the special thoughts or behaviors that individuals use to help them Chamot (1990)comprehend, learn, or retain new information” Oxford (1990) Foreign or second language (L2) learning strategies are specific actions, behaviors, steps or techniques students use-often consciously-to improve their progress in apprehending, internalizing, and using the L2. Cohen (1998) Second language learner strategies constitute those processes which are consciously selected by learners and which may result in actions taken to enhance the learning or use of a second or a foreign language, through the storage, retention, recall, and application of information about that language. They encompass both language learning and language use strategies. Wen Qiufang Learning strategies are actions or measures which the students take in order to (2000) study more efficiently. This definition emphasizes two points: the goal of using learning strategies is the learner’s actions, rather than his/her thought. The action can be either exterior or interior. According to Ellis (1999), several problems arise form these varied definitions of this linguistic term. The first problem concerns whether language learning strategies are to be perceived of as behavioral (and therefore observable) or as mental, or as both. Oxford (1990) considers them as essentially behavioral, while Weinstein and Mayer (1986) thinks of them as both behavioral and mental. The second problem is the precise nature of the behaviors that are to count as learning strategies. Stern (1983) distinguishes strategies as general and more or less deliberate approach’ to learning, for example, an active task approach and techniques as observable forms of language learning behavior evident in particular areas in language learning, such 8 as grammar and vocabulary. Other researchers, however, have used the term “strategy” to refer to the kind of behaviors that Stern calls techniques. The third problem is whether learning strategies are to be seen as conscious and intentional or as subconscious. Chamot (1987) refers to them as “deliberate actions”. Seliger (1984) defines strategies as basic abstract categories of processing by which information perceived in the outside world is organized and categorized into cognitive structures as part of a conceptual network. However, some researchers consider that what starts out as a conscious “tactic” may involve into a subconscious “strategy”. The fourth one is about whether learning strategies are seen as having a direct or indirect effect on interlanguage development. Rubin (1987) asserts that the effect is a direct one. But other researchers, such as Stinger, consider it to be more indirect strategy use that provides learners with data, upon which the deep subconscious processes can work.>