… and teach our students how to learn instead. According to Alvin Toffler “the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.”

We often hear how most of the jobs younger students will do in the future don’t exist yet, and while this is not necessarily true (teachers, doctors, judges have been around a while and show no signs of fading away), what is clear is that whatever students learn at school or university, they will need to update their skill set as time goes by. If I was still teaching with what I knew when I did my CTEFLA ( yes, I’m THAT old!!) then I don’t think I’d have mastered the photocopier yet!

You might remember Sugar Mitra talking at a plenary session at IATEFL a few years ago about a project where, by giving children access to computers they taught themselves English as well as other skills. if not you can see his TED talk here.

So, if our learners need to constantly update their knowledge then it makes sense to teach them the skills needed to do just that. Even when learning a particular curriculum, it is clear that some students are ready, whereas others will need to approach the material again at a later date.

This is where learning strategies come in. It is my deep-seated belief that by teaching students HOW to learn, the WHAT will take care of itself.

I’ve been teaching learning strategies as an integral part of my lessons for years now, an activity on self-motivation or mindset here or there, a class discussion on how to “do” a listening that leads to the creation of a checklist. The biggest benefit I’ve noticed is for the students with different learning needs, and especially those who lack confidence and are convinced they’re “rubbish” at languages. What I love is how my students take away the skills they learn in “English class” and use them elsewhere, to revise for history tests, to motivate themselves on out of school projects, etc. I’ve even found myself putting into practice what I teach about setting goals and work organisation to become more efficient, although that’s definitely work in progress!

I was lucky enough to be able to collect many of the activities I use in class together in this book by DELTA.

Let me know what you think, do you teach learning strategies? I’m sure you do even though you’ve never thought about it. What activities do you find particularly useful for your students? Please share all your ideas and thought below:)