THE ROLE OF MOTIVATION TO DEVELOP ACOGNITIVE LEARNING STRATEGIE

THE ROLE OF MOTIVATION TO DEVELOP ACOGNITIVE LEARNING STRATEGIE

MULAOSMANOVIĆ, Nejra

Cognitive learning styles and learning strategies differ from person to person. Identifying student learning styles helps educators understand how people perceive and process information in different ways. The stable and pervasive characteristics of an individual, expressed through the interaction of one's behavior and personality as one approaches a learning task, is described as a "learning style". Cognitive learning styles and learning strategies affect people differently, depending on whether the person has left hemisphere strengths or right hemisphere strengths. For example, a person who performs best on analytical language might lack understanding and the use of correct syntactical structures, as well as semantically ordered comprehension of words and phonetic articulation. Another person may perform best on tasks calling for intuitive feel for language, which would also include expression, richness of lexical connotation, discourse, rhythm and intonation. Another person may have an affinity for methods that are focused, systematic, sequential and cumulative. Yet another person may have an affinity for methods in which various features are managed simultaneously, realistically and in a significant context.hat same person would be less likely to direct his own learning and may function well in quasi-autonomy (guided discovery), but may well express preference for a formal, teacher-dominated learning arrangement as a compensation for own perceived deficiency in ability to structure. All cognitive strategies differ from one another, just like person differ from one another. We can find many different cognitive or learning strategies, but still it does not mean that everyone would accept and adopt all of them. Someone can performe better with one strategy, but someone else can perform better with another strategy.Learning strategies are “operations employed by the learner to aid the acquisition,storage, retrieval, and use of information...(they are) specific actions taken by thelearner to makeearning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective, and moretransferableto new situations” (Oxford, 1990, p. 8).Strategy use varies according to the task, stageof the learner, age of thelearner, the context of learning, individual learning styles, and cultural differences.Currentresearch is now showing that the difference between successful and unsuccessfullearners is morethe quality of strategies used, not quantity. Successful language students do notnecessarily usemore strategies, but instead use different combinations of strategies.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2014

3513