The Essay: Strategies for Improving Learning Ability

            Learning English is a need for learners who live in competitive era. The learners compete each other to improve their quality of life. By learning English, learners have an opportunity to make a better living that makes them satisfied for what they have done. Learning English must cover vocabulary building, grammar mastery, language skills mastery, and so on. In line with that, learners study some subjects such as listening, speaking, reading, writing, sociolinguistic, cross culture understanding, sentence structure, poetry, and so on that are complicated. Hence, learners need to apply some strategies to make their learning successful. According to Oxford (1990), there are six strategies for improving learning ability of learners such as cognitive strategies, metacognitive strategies, memory-relate strategies, compensatory strategies, affective strategies, and social strategies.

            The first strategies for learning English is cognitive strategies. These strategies encompass the learners to manipulate the language lessons in direct ways through reasoning, analysis, note-taking, summarizing, synthesizing, outlining, reorganizing information  (Oxford, 1990). In this strategy, learners learn how to make good reasons for the arguments that they give in learning. Learners can take notes for creating structure for input and output during the lesson. Learners need to focus in outlining to organize the ideas. Moreover, learners can summarize the materials to increase their comprehension about the materials.   Learners can use this strategy to solve their problems. Learners  analysis the problems,  then try to find out the best solutions to deal with their problems.

            Besides cognitive strategies, learners can practice metacognitive strategies. These strategies give an opportunity  to the learners to control their own learning. They are responsible for their own learning, so that, they are able to use their creativity to improve their learning qualities. There are some activities  that can be applied in these techniques such as gathering and organizing materials, arranging and plan their studies, evaluating task success, and so on (Oxford, 1990). For example, learners arrange a study schedule to make their learning run smoothly and gather the information or materials from many sources to get strong data that can support their assignments. In addition, Purpura (1999) said, “Metacognitive strategies provide clear evidence that can be used in task completion.” In line with that, the learners are able do the tasks with good patterns when they have got clear evidences.

            The next strategies that learners use to improve their learning abilities is memory-related strategies. These strategies help learners to keep and retrieve the information in an orderly string (Oxford, 1990). These strategies enable the learners to memorize the vocabulary and structures of the lessons. As the result, they can improve their vocabulary building. The example of activities that learners do to remember and enrich their vocabulary are reading books, watching movies, and listening to the song. Moreover, learning through games can be used in these strategies. That’s because games can help learners to remember the vocabulary in fun ways. In addition, the learners can also apply these techniques to support their memory like applying images and sound, using flashcards, using physical response, and body movement.

            After memory-related strategies, learners can use compensatory strategies. These strategies cover the learners make up for missing knowledge in their learning (Oxford, 1990). According to Oxford, there are some activities to apply these strategies such as guessing the information from the context in listening and reading activity, using synonyms and talking around the gapping word to help speaking and writing learners’ activity, and using gestures or pause words. For example, learners fill in the blank exercise by writing words on the task sheet according to the audio that they listened. Moreover, learners can use gestures while speaking to make the listeners understand about the information. In line with that, compensatory strategies are suitable used for speaking and writing (Cohen, 1998). The learners can improve their speaking and writing skills when they understand how to use these strategies well.

            In addition, learners can improve their learning abilities through affective strategies. These strategies help students to control their emotions, feelings, and values.  There are some tips to control the emotions like increasing the confidence, reducing anxiety, and improve the awareness to the good environment. For instance, learners can reduce the anxiety before presentations by relaxing and have a glass of water, increasing their confidence by practicing at home, and creating a better environment by being positive to the surroundings.  Moreover, learners can use these strategies to identify one’s mood and restless level, talk about feelings, reward oneself for good performance, and use deep breathing (Dreyer and Oxford, 1996). In line with that, learners are able to discuss feelings to the others to improve their moods, so that, they can concentrate well in studying while they have good moods. Furthermore, learners get the motivation by giving reinforcement to themselves for good performance that they have done. The activities that can be applied in these strategies are personalizing activities, pair work, and group work.

            Finally, learners can use social strategies to improve their learning abilities. These strategies enable the learners to communicate well in  the society and work with others to understand the target language and target cultures (Oxford, 1990). Learners are the social human beings, they need to socialize in their daily lives. These strategies give them the opportunity to do that. According to Oxford, there are some activities that learners can do to apply these strategies such as asking questions or confusing points to get the clarification, asking for help in doing language tasks through the cooperative activity with others, talking with a native speakers to practice English languages, and exploring cultural and social forms to develop cultural understanding. For example, learners join English courses, speaking club, writing club, and movie club. As the result, they are able to improve their social lives through the communication with the teachers or peers about the culture, knowledge, and current issues. Learners are able to be good social human beings when they can use these strategies in their lives.

            In brief, strategies of learning English are very important to support learner's achievements in their education. There are some strategies that learners can use to improve their abilities in learning, so that, they can compete well with the others. Firstly, cognitive strategies that enable the learners manipulate the language lesson in direct ways (Oxford, 1990). Secondly, metacognitive strategies that enable learners to gather and organize materials, arranging a study schedule, evaluating task success, and so on (Oxford, 1990). Thirdly, memory-related strategies that help learners to hold data and retrieve the information in an orderly string (Oxford, 1990). Fourthly, compensatory strategies that learners can use for speaking and writing (Cohen, 1998). Fifthly, affective strategies that help students to control their emotions, feelings, and values. Finally, social strategies  that enable  the learners to be active to communicate in  the society and work with others to understand the target language and target cultures (Oxford, 1990). The learners can choose the strategies according to their comprehension and their needs to help them success in mastering English.