Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc.

(TESOL)

What the "Good Language Learner" Can Teach Us

Author(s): Joan Rubin
Reviewed work(s):
Source: TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Mar., 1975), pp. 41-51
Published by: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL)
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TESOL Quarterly
Vol. 9, No. 1
March 1975

What the "GoodLanguageLearner"Can TeachUs*

Joan Rubin
The differentialsuccess of second/foreign language learners suggests a
need to examine in detail what strategies successful language learners
employ. An indication is given of what these strategies might consist
of and a list of several widely recognizedgood learnerstrategiesis given.
In addition to the need for research on this topic, it is suggested that
teacherscan already begin to help their less successful students improve
their performanceby paying more attention to learner strategiesalready
seen as productive.
It is common knowledge that everyone learns his first language with
a fair degree of success, the reason being that everyone is born with the
ability to learn a language and then grows up in a community in which he
needs to function to some degree through language, the rules of which are
imparted to him in the normal course of the day. Yet, it is equally common
knowledge that some people are more successful (however this is defined)
than others at learning a second language.' This differential success is
often explained by saying that "X has more language learning ability than
Y." Yet there is something curious here: if all peoples can learn their first
language easily and well (although some have more verbal skills than
others), why does this innate ability seem to decline for some when second
language learning is the task? Although one of the more essential skills
which many people try to acquire through formal education is competence
* An earlier version of this
paper was prepared in 1971-72 while the author was
a consultant to the New Haven Unified School District, Union City, California under
an ESEA Title VII grant. Drafts of this paper have profited from suggestions for improvement by Andrew Cohen, Robert Cooper, Sarah Gudschinsky, H. H. Stern, Bjorn
Jernudd, Clarence Wadleigh, Dene Lawson, Nancy Lou Belmore, Vera John-Steiner,
Edward Hernandez, Michelle Rosaldo, Richard Tucker, and Albert Marckwardt. All
errors remain my responsibility. Thanks are due also to teachers of the French department, the Hebrew class, and the Teaching of English as a Second Language department at Stanford University for allowing me to attend classes, discuss strategies with
their students, and listen to tapes of students discussing their own personal strategies.
I am indebted to a number of people who helped orient me to the relevant literatureRobert Politzer, George Spindler, Bernard Siegel, Tom Owens, and Irene Thompson.
Thanks, too, to the English as a Second Language department at the University of
Hawaii and especially Charles Blatchford for their cooperation and enthusiasm in
testing my observation instrument and offering suggestions.
Ms. Rubin, Visiting Researcher at the Culture Learning Institute, East-West Center, University of Hawaii, is author of National Bilingualism in Paraguay and editor
(with B. Jernudd) of Can Language Be Planned and (with R. Shuy) of Language Planning: Current Issues and Research. She has taught ESL in Brazil and at Georgetown
University and has trained Peace Corps volunteers in language teaching methodology.
lThis difference may not occur with very young children learning a second language in a natural setting with the kinds of communicative demands made in the use
of a first language.
41

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TESOL QUARTERLY

in a second or foreign language, the success record for attempts to help

students acquire this skill has been notoriously poor.2
More positively, we can observe that this ability does not decline for
all students studying a second language. We all know of students who
learn a second language in spite of the teacher, the textbook, or the classroom situation. How do these individuals achieve their success? I would
like to suggest that if we knew more about what the "successful learners"
did, we might be able to teach these strategies to poorer learners to enhance
their success record.
Good language learning is said to depend on at least three variables:
aptitude, motivation and opportunity. Of the three, the first-aptitudeis assumed to be the least subject to manipulation; how subject to change
it is, is a question frequently discussed in the literature. Some authors feel
that language aptitude is "a relatively invariant characteristic of the
individual, not subject to easy modification by learning" (Carroll 1960: 38).
Others (Politzer and Weiss 1969; Yeni-Komshian 1967; and Hatfield 1965)
have demonstrated that language aptitude can be improved somewhat
through training; still others have pointed to the intricate interrelationship
between aptitude and motivation.
There are two major tests of language aptitude currently in wide use:
one by Carroll and Sapon and one by Pimsleur. That by Carroll-Sapon
(Carroll 1965: 96) uses mainly linguistic parameters as criteria to predict
language learning success: (1) phonetic coding, (2) grammatical sensitivity
-the ability to handle grammar, (3) rote memorization ability, and (4)
inductive language learning ability-the ability to infer linguistic forms,
rules and patterns from new linguistic contexts with a minimum of supervision and guidance. The test by Pimsleur (1966) adds a motivational
dimension and identifies three components: (1) verbal intelligence-familiarity with words and the ability to reason analytically about verbal materials,
(2) motivation to learn the language, and (3) auditory ability. These tests
are to be used with those who have not had prior experience with a foreign
language.
While these tests are helpful in predicting success, they give the language
teacher and learner little direction as to what can be done about a person's
ability. Commonly, the poorer student may notice that the better student
always has the right answer but he never discovers why, never finds out
what little "tricks" lead the better student to the right answer. For the
student who wants to improve his learning, aptitude tests don't give enough
detailed information about the kinds of habits a learner will need to develop.
Rather than letting him just admire the good student and feel inferior, we
teacha This evaluation of the success record seems to be generally agreed upon by
ers as well as students, no matter whether the success criterion is passing the course,
acquiring certain skills (reading, writing, speaking and understanding) or actually putting to use what has been learned. Indeed, students in many American universities
have been so dissatisfied with the profits from second language courses, they have petitioned with success to have the language requirement removed.

GOOD LANGUAGE LEARNER

43

need to isolate what the good learner does-what his strategies are-and
impart his knowledge to less successful learners.
By strategies, I mean the techniques or devices which a learner may
use to acquire knowledge. Some of the strategies which seem to be important are the following: (1) The good language learner may be a good
guesser, that is, he gathers and stores information in an efficient manner
so it can be easily retrieved. He may listen to a phrase, pick out the words
he understands and infer the rest. He may actively look for clues to
meaning-in the topic, setting, or attitudes of the speakers. His guessing
strategy may be stratified from the more general to the specific so that he
gets the most information from each question or sentence. (2) He is often
willing to appear foolish in order to communicate and get his message across.
(3) He will try out his knowledge by making up new sentences, thus bringing
his newly acquired competence into use. I will give more details on good
language learner strategies later in this paper, but it is important to
recognize here that tests of aptitude are meant to find the minimal number
of dimensions to predict success without detailing all of the many strategies
involved. If the focus is to help students improve their abilities, then these
strategies should be looked at in much greater detail.
A second variable mentioned frequently in regard to good language
learning is that of motivation. Several articles discuss those aspects of
motivation which are essential for good language learning. Gardner and
Lambert (1959) have isolated two kinds of motivation, by now well-known:
instrumental and integrative. They find that the latter correlates more
with successful language learning. While it is generally agreed that the
best language learning occurs in the country/region where the language is
spoken or when the language is the most common one at home, some would
go so far as to say that the classroom is no place to learn a language.
Macnamara (1971) points out that the essential difference between a classroom and the street as a place to learn a language is motivation. According
to Macnamara, the student seldom has anything so urgent to say to the
teacher that they will improvise with whatever communicative skills they
possess to get their meaning across. However, the good language learner
seems to have a high motivation to communicate, no matter where he is.
The problem is how to provide the necessary motivation for others within the
school framework-if that is possible. Cooper (1973: 313) also emphasizes
the need factor in promoting language learning: "If we want to enable the
student to use English, then we must put him in situations which demand
the use of English." With proper motivation, the learner may become an
active investigator of the nature of the language to be learned. Francis
(1971) feels that students will learn to do what they themselves exert
themselves to do.
A third variable mentioned above was opportunity. This includes all
those activities both within and outside the classroom which expose the
learner to the language and which afford him an opportunity to practice

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TESOL QUARTERLY

what he has learned. We have all noted that the good language learner
takes and creates opportunities to practice what he has learned while the
poorer learner passively does what is assigned him. The good language
learner uses the language when he is not required to do so and seeks opportunities to hear the language (attends foreign language movies, joins
foreign language clubs, listens to T.V. or the radio, uses the foreign language
with other students outside class). What is important here is to discover
what advantage students take of the opportunities they either have or create.
I agree with Ervin-Tripp (1970) who suggests that there has been too much
attention on the input to the learner and too little on what is going on in
the learner himself. She suggests that the focus on opportunity alone without
considering the use that the learner is making of such an opportunity will
not allow an adequate model of language learning. "Any learning model
which predicts language learning on the basis of input without regard to
the selective processing by the learner will not work, except for trivial
problems."
If language learning is really the acquisition of communicative competence as well as of linguistic competence, then we need also to examine
how the good language learner defines opportunity as exposure to many
different social situations so as to get a proper feel for the circumstances
in which a language code is to be employed.
It is clearly difficult to separate these three variables (aptitude, motivation, opportunity) since they do impinge on one another. An individual
with lots of natural ability and motivation but with little opportunity may
have difficulty in acquiring a language. If opportunity is present, but there
is little motivation or poor learning skills, then we may expect that the
language learning will proceed slowly. Equally, a person with lots of natural
ability and opportunity may fail to learn because of poor motivation.
What is clear is that the good learner has or creates all of these and
the poorer learner does not. If we are to improve the success of the classroom teaching, we will need to know a great deal more about the learning
process.
The Good Language Learner
While there is little systematic work relating language learning strategies
to success, there are a number of observations which can be made about
individuals who are good language learners. I have been able to isolate
some of these by observing students in classrooms in California and Hawaii,
by observing myself and by talking to other good language learners, and
by eliciting observations from some second language teachers. As I have
begun to observe classes, what fascinates me is how often the teacher plows
ahead with the lesson seemingly with little awareness of what is going
on in each student, and often without directing the attention of the poorer
students to how the successful student arrived at his answer. That is, many
foreign language teachers are so concerned with finding the best method

GOOD LANGUAGE LEARNER

45

or with getting the correct answer that they fail to attend to the learning
process. If they attended to it more, they might be able to tailor their input
to their students' needs and might be able to provide the student with
techniques that would enable him to learn on his own. Indeed, no course
could ever teach all we need to know about a language and the teacher
must find the means to help the student help himself, when the teacher
is not around.
The task of observing these strategies is a complicated one because
they necessarily involve cognitive processes which neither the learner nor
the teacher may be able to specify. However, when our attention is focused
on observing these strategies, I think we may find it easier to isolate some
of them. Just recently, I discovered that by using video-tape more of these
strategies would be observable than by just using a tape recorder.3 With the
video-tapes we hope to help learners and teachers see what is going on in the
classroom. We hope to be able, as well, to abstract the learner strategies
by interviewing the learner about his behavior during a particular classroom
while showing him a tape of his behavior.
In spite of the fact that we are only beginning to isolate these strategies,
I think that it is useful to list some of the ones found thus far. They remain
general but give an idea of the kind of strategies I think we ought to be
looking for.
Strategies
1. The good language learner is a willing and accurate guesser. It seems
that the good language learner is both comfortable with uncertainty (indeed
he may enjoy it) and willing to try out his guesses. A good guesser is one
who gathers and stores information in an efficient manner. The good guesser
uses all the clues which the setting offers him and thus is able to narrow
down what the meaning and intent of the communication might be. In this
sense, he is carrying over into his second language behavior something that
all of us do in our first language interactions. We never comprehend all
that the speaker intended and we are always using whatever clues the environment, and the discourse may give us.4 Guessing is based on what we
know about the social relationship between the speakers, the setting, the
event, the mood, the channel and all of the other parameters that Hymes
has isolated for us in the ethnography of communication (Hymes, 1972).
It is based on what we know about the rules of speaking (Cf. Paulston, 1974,
for some examples of the importance of knowing these). It is based on
factual probability (Twaddell, 1973). It is also but not exclusively based
on what we know about grammar and lexicon.
81 am indebted to Roger Prince, a graduate student in the English as a Second
Language Program at the University of Hawaii, for his willingness to explore the
use of video-tape in this research.
'What is fascinating to me is that most language classrooms discourage this normal communication strategy by telling students not to guess or by not asking the good
guesser how he got there.

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The good guesser uses his feel for grammatical structures, clues from
the lexical items he recognizes, clues from redundancy in the message. He
uses non-verbal clues, word-association clues, outside knowledge (his general
knowledge of society, of similarities to his native language). He makes
inferences as to the purpose, intent, point of view of a message or communication.
The ability to guess seems to relate to one's first language as much
as to one's second. Mueller (1971: 153) calls our attention to the fact
that people may vary in their ability to comprehend what they hear or read
in their native language. The fast reader and the good listener can understand while paying attention to a minimum of cues. He can overlook unknown words, or can read even though focussing only on content words.
Such a person guesses, or makes inferences about, the meaning of words or
sentence structure. A wrong guess does not disturb him, but is quickly
corrected from the subsequent context. Carton, who directed an important
initial study on the role of inferencing in language learning, concurs:
"Individual learners vary according to their propensity of making inferences,
tolerance of risk and ability to make valid, rational and reasonable inferences." (1966, 18). Carton also suggests that there are three steps to
guessing: (1) scanning, confirmation, and testing for adequacy, (2) assessment of probability that the inference is correct, and (3) re-adjustment
to later information.
The ability to guess changes as one gets older; adults seem to stratify
their guessing from the more general to the specific, gathering the most information from each question. In two separate articles, Jerome Bruner and
N. H. Mackworth (1970) and F. A. Mosher and K. R. Horsby (1966)
have shown that adults use different strategies in guessing than do children
and that they are more efficient guessers.
The importance of guessing and inferring has been recognized for a
long time in second language learning (see for example, Twaddell 1967 and
1973) yet the details of how this is to be taught are not at all clearly worked
out. Twaddell does make some fine suggestions about guessing in his more
recent 1973 article. Some texts assume that guessing will take place, yet
none train students directly to do so.5
2. The good language learner has a strong drive to communicate, or to
learn from a communication. He is willing to do many things to get his
message across. He may use a circumlocution, saying "the object on top
of your head" when he doesn't know the word for hat. He may paraphrase in order to explain the different meaning of a phrase (for example,
one student explained that the term "snack bar" had a different meaning
in Japan than it does in the United States). He will use gestures to get his
message across or spell a word when his pronunciation is not clear. He will
5The direct method assumes that the student will guess the appropriate cognates
found in the target language yet never allows the teacher to refer to the mother tongue
so that the guessing is expected of the student but is never a part of the teaching strategy.

GOOD LANGUAGE LEARNER

47

use a cognate, from any language he knows, to try to express his meaning.
He may not limit himself to a particular sentence construction but will use
those constructions he does have to the fullest. For example, he may use
"going to go" if he doesn't know the future in English, the important point
being to get the message across (Richards, 1971, discusses similar strategies).
He may try to form new words by nominalizing a verb or verbalizing a noun
and then checking the response. Having this strong motivation to communicate, the good learner will use whatever knowledge he has to get his message
across. This strategy has an important by-product in that if he is successful
in communicating, his motivation to participate and acquire the necessary
tools to do so will be enhanced.
3. The good language learner is often not inhibited. He is willing to
appear foolish if reasonable communication results. He is willing to make
mistakes in order to learn and to communicate. He is willing to live with a
certain amount of vagueness.
4. In addition to focusing on communication, the good language learner
is prepared to attend to form. The good language learner is constantly looking for patterns in the language.6 He attends to the form in a particular
way, constantly analyzing, categorizing, synthesizing. He is constantly trying
to find schemes for classifying information. He is trying to distinguish
relevant from irrelevant clues. He is looking for the interaction or relation
of elements (using as a basis for this analysis information from his own
language or others that he has learned). Naturally, the more experience a
learner has with doing this sort of exercise the more successful he will be.
It has often been observed that a person learns his second or third foreign
language more easily than his first just because he has had practice in
attending to the important formal features of a language.
5. The good language learner practices. He may practice pronouncing
words or making up sentences. He will seek out opportunities to use the
language by looking for native speakers, going to the movies or to cultural
events. He initiates conversations with the teacher or his fellow students
in the target language. He is willing to repeat. He will usually take advantage of every opportunity to speak in class; indeed, in any one class
certain students seem to stand out and are called on more frequently.
6. The good language learner monitors his own and the speech of others.
That is, he is constantly attending to how well his speech is being received
and whether his performance meets the standards he has learned. Part of
his monitoring is a function of his active participation in the learning process.
He is always processing information whether or not he is called on to perform. He can learn from his own mistakes.
7. The good language learner attends to meaning. He knows that in
order to understand the message, it is not sufficient to pay attention to the
grammarof the language or to the surface form of speech. He attends to the
6This is what Carroll, Sapon and Pimsleur have called "grammatical sensitivity
and inductive language learning ability."

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TESOL QUARTERLY

context of the speech act, he attends to the relationship of the participants,

he attends to the rules of speaking, he attends to the mood of the speech
act. In learning one's first language, some scholars have suggested that
meaning comprehensionis prior to structure acquisition. Macnamara (1972)
argues that an infant doesn't start to learn his first language until he can
understand what is said without hearing the utterance. In the case of the
second language learner, the learner already has a known structure and a
lexicon which can be used to sort out some of the message. Thus, context
is less prominent, although still very important for the second language
learner.
He sees language as serving many functions, and he looks for ways to
convey these functions. He knows that in any social interaction, there is
room for the interpretation of the speaker's intention. He knows that many
cues to the message are to be found in observing the nature of the interaction. There are a whole host of social dimensions which the good language
learner uses to help in his understanding of the message and to enable him
to frame an appropriate response.
The good language learner may try to isolate those features which give
him maximum intelligibility. He may develop a feeling for those phonological cues which best enhance intelligibility. In English, this might mean
that he emphasizes accurate production of intonation patterns over that of
individual sounds because of the intimate relationship of these patterns with
syntax. In English, some mispronunciation of individual sounds will be
tolerated if intonation patterns are accurate.
There are lots of other things which the good language learner does
which need exploring. Some other hints are in the literature for memorization techniques. Carroll (1966: 104) suggests that "The more meaningful
the material to be learned, the greater the facility in learning and retention."
It might be expected that the good language learner finds ways to make
the things he must memorize more meaningful. Carroll (1966: 104) also
suggests that: "The more numerous kinds of association that are made
to an item, the better are learning and retention." Again we need to observe
what the good language learner does to enhance associations.
Further Research
The above list offers some good insights into the cognitive processes that
seem to be going on in good language learners. A recent article by Stern
(1974) lists some additional learner strategies which enhance our insights
into the process. However, this is just a start and more systematic and deeper
observation will need to be carried out. To do so a number of factors need
to be taken into account first since it is clear that considerable variation
between learners may be expected.
The learner strategies (of even successful learners) will vary with: (1)
The task-some material may require rote memorization while other material may require oral drill. (2) The learning stage-language learners may in

GOOD LANGUAGE LEARNER

49

fact use different strategies at different points in time in the learning process.
(3) The age of the learner-it is probably true that adults do better
guessing (having at their disposal multiple hierarchies of redundant cues)
while the child has not yet developed such hierarchies. Children on the
other hand may be freer in adapting to new situations and to acting out a
communication. (4) The context-if second language learning takes place
in the classroom with little or no opportunity for practice, the type of
strategies used may well be more limited and distinct from those used
where the learner has an opportunity to and perhaps has an obligation to
use his language for real communication purposes. (5) Individual stylessome people are not comfortable unless they have something written in
front of them or unless they have the grammatical points under consideration in front of them. Some people learn better by visual means while
others learn better by auditory means.7 We should expect that there
would be many different kinds of "good language learners." (6) Cultural
differences in cognitive learning styles-in some societies, listening until the
entire code is absorbed and one can speak perfectly is a reported form of
learning; in other successive approximation to native speech is used as a
learning strategy; while in still others rote learning is the most common
learning strategy. Good learners may have considerable insight to contribute to their learning difficulties and to their preferences for instructional
methods.
By looking at what is going on inside the good language learner, by
considering how he is successful, what strategies, what cognitive processes
he uses to learn a language, we may be led to well-developed theories of
the processing of linguistic information which can be taught to others.
Perhaps we can then establish procedures to train others to use these or
similar procedures to acquire a second language.
In the meantime, teachers can begin to look at what the good student
does to acquire his skill. They can stop, if so doing, inhibiting the use of
communicative strategies in the classroom, that is, use of all sorts of clues
to guess at meaning. Rather they should encourage students to transfer
what they know about the world and about communication to second language learning. I agree completely with Twaddell (1973) who says that
"The learner must be allowed, must be encouraged, to accept temporary
vagueness in the early stages of familiarity with a given word." Indeed, I
would say that the early learner should be encouraged to accept temporary
vagueness in many other areas of language learning. In this sense, he will
be replicating the more natural communication process where the participants in communication do not always hear, understand or properly interpret what is being said to them; still they do not panic but continue the
7 Individul learning styles are reported to be affected by several variables as well:
(a) general cognitive style (b) personality traits (perfectionism, self-confidence, extroversion) (c) past school experiences (d) educational achievement (e) experience in
learning other foreign languages.

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TESOL QUARTERLY

conversation and see if the item becomes clarified in the course of the
dialogue.
The teacher should help students understand how topic, context, mood,
human relationships help him narrow down the possible meaning of a
sentence, or a word. He should help the student guess what the linguistic
function of a particular item might be. In this sense, the teacher would be
helping the student learn how to learn a language.
When we have researched this problem more thoroughly we will be able
to incorporate learning strategies into our methodology, we will be able to
help the learner select the appropriate method for his own learning style and
we will be able to adapt the strategy to the particular cultural learning
style. The inclusion of knowledge about the good language learner in our
classroom instructional strategies will lessen the difference between the good
learner and the poorer one.
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Pimsleur, Paul, 1966. Testing foreign language learning. In Albert Valdman (ed.),
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