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Articles |
Poor language learners and their strategies for dealing with new vocabulary
Graeme Porte is a teacher and teacher trainer with the British Council at the University of Granada in Spain. He graduated from Sheffield University in 1977, where he also obtained a PGCE in TEFL. He has worked as an EFL teacher and teacher trainer in London and Brazil and gained his MA in Applied Linguistics from Bangor in 1986. He is currently involved in developing materials enabling poor EFL learners to exploit their learning strategies.
The analysis of structured interviews with fifteen under-achieving EFL learners in private language schools in London demonstrated that these learners were using strategies for dealing with new vocabulary which were very similar to those found in studies of ‘the good language learner’. Furthermore, the use of these strategies in class was seen to be affected by factors of present and past language learning experience. This article discusses the implications of these results and suggests ways in which teachers can help under-achieving EFL learners to identify, develop and, where feasible, refine these strategies in order to make them more efficient.