Learning Strategy Instruction
Learning Strategy Instruction is the explicit, modeled teaching of the cognitive and metacognitive techniques that learners use to understand, retain, and apply new content and language. Cognitive strategies act directly on the material to be learned (for example, summarizing, note-taking, grouping, imagery, inferencing, and using cognates), while metacognitive strategies help learners plan, monitor, and evaluate their own thinking. The approach is rooted in the Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA) developed by Chamot and O'Malley and in Oxford's strategy taxonomy, and it aligns with the learning-strategies expectations of the Texas ELPS. Rather than leaving strategy use to chance, the teacher names a strategy, demonstrates it through think-alouds, and gradually releases responsibility so emergent bilingual students learn how to learn.
How it’s typically applied
- 1Preparation: identify the academic task, then surface what students already know and which strategies they already use (in any language), so instruction builds on existing resources rather than starting from zero.
- 2Presentation: name one strategy explicitly (for example, summarizing or self-questioning), explain when and why it helps, and model it with a think-aloud so students hear the invisible thinking made audible.
- 3Guided practice: have students try the strategy on authentic, grade-level content tasks with scaffolds and peer collaboration, while you coach and prompt strategy use.
- 4Self-evaluation: lead students to reflect on whether the strategy worked, using learning logs, checklists, or short discussions, which builds the metacognitive cycle of plan, monitor, and evaluate.
- 5Expansion and transfer: ask students to decide which strategies work best for them and apply those strategies to new tasks, new content areas, and out-of-school contexts, including in their home language.
- 6Gradual release: move from teacher modeling to shared practice to independent, student-selected strategy use, fading scaffolds as competence grows.
- 7Build a shared strategy vocabulary with anchor charts so strategy names become part of the classroom routine across all four language domains and all content areas.
Why it works for emergent bilingual students
Emergent bilingual students arrive with cognitive and metacognitive strategies already developed in their home language. A central insight of Cummins's common underlying proficiency is that higher-order strategies such as planning, inferencing, summarizing, and self-monitoring can transfer across languages once they are made explicit. Strategy instruction therefore activates assets students already own and gives them a transferable toolkit for accessing rigorous content while their English develops. O'Malley and Chamot's research showed that more effective language learners use a wider and better-orchestrated range of strategies, and that these strategies can be taught, so strategy instruction is an equity move that makes the productive habits of strong learners visible and learnable for everyone. Because metacognition lets learners regulate their own comprehension, it helps manage the load of doing content and language at once and supports self-directed, confident learners.
Adapting it across proficiency levels
Pre-Production
At Pre-Production, model strategies through action, visuals, and the home language rather than English explanation. Demonstrate concept mapping, drawing, sorting and grouping, and matching with realia and gestures. Let students show strategy use nonverbally (pointing, drawing, organizing picture cards) and use cognates and the home language to name what they already do. A nonverbal or one-word demonstration counts as legitimate strategy use.
Beginning
At Beginning, pair each strategy with strong visual and home-language support plus short sentence frames. Students label graphic organizers, use a strategy checklist with icons, and narrate strategy choices in simple phrases (for example, 'I look at the picture'). Allow bilingual notes and cognate strategies so students leverage their full linguistic repertoire while building English labels for each strategy.
Intermediate
At Intermediate, students apply named strategies more independently with moderate scaffolding. They keep learning logs, self-question, summarize short texts, and explain in expanded sentences which strategy they used and why. Introduce orchestrating two or more strategies for one task, and begin student self-selection from a small strategy menu, with sentence stems supporting the reflection.
High Intermediate / Advanced
At High Intermediate and Advanced, students self-select, combine, and evaluate strategies flexibly across content areas with minimal scaffolding. They justify strategy choices in academic language, monitor and repair their own comprehension, transfer strategies to new genres and tasks, and reflect on effectiveness in writing. The teacher's role shifts to coaching nuance and fostering autonomous, self-regulated strategy use.
In the classroom
In a 7th-grade science unit on cells, the teacher introduces the cognitive strategy of summarizing using a CALLA sequence. She first asks students what they already do to remember science ideas (Preparation), then thinks aloud as she reads a paragraph on cell membranes and produces a one-sentence summary, underlining keywords (Presentation). Students practice summarizing the next paragraph in pairs using a sentence frame, with a Pre-Production student drawing the membrane and labeling it in Spanish and English, Intermediate students writing a two-sentence summary, and Advanced students summarizing the whole section and explaining why summarizing helped them (Guided Practice). The class records in a learning log which strategy worked best (Self-Evaluation), and students are asked to use summarizing in their social studies reading the next day (Expansion), making the strategy transferable across content areas and languages.
Research basis
The current Texas ELPS include a cross-curricular learning strategies student expectation requiring emergent bilingual students to use strategic learning techniques such as concept mapping, drawing, memorizing, comparing, contrasting, and reviewing to acquire basic and grade-level vocabulary across all content areas. These standards remain in effect until they are replaced by the new ELPS beginning with the 2026-2027 school year.
Texas Education Agency. (2025a). English language proficiency standards (19 Texas Administrative Code §74.4). Texas Education Agency. http://txrules.elaws.us/rule/title19_chapter74_sec.74.4 [link]
The new Texas ELPS, adopted by the State Board of Education in 2024 and relocated to 19 Texas Administrative Code Chapter 120, Subchapter B, describe five English language proficiency levels (Pre-Production, Beginning, Intermediate, High Intermediate, and Advanced) and are to be implemented in classrooms beginning with the 2026-2027 school year.
Texas Education Agency. (2025b). English language proficiency standards (ELPS) update 2026-2027. Texas Education Agency. https://www.txel.org/media/atraqi0g/elps-update-2026-2027.pdf [link]
The Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach integrates content, academic language, and explicit instruction in learning strategies through a five-phase instructional sequence of preparation, presentation, practice, self-evaluation, and expansion.
Chamot, A. U. (2009). The CALLA handbook: Implementing the cognitive academic language learning approach (2nd ed.). Pearson Longman.
More effective second language learners use a wider range of cognitive, metacognitive, and social and affective strategies, and these learning strategies can be explicitly taught to improve comprehension and retention.
O'Malley, J. M., & Chamot, A. U. (1990). Learning strategies in second language acquisition. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139524490 [link]
Language learning strategies can be organized into direct (memory, cognitive, compensation) and indirect (metacognitive, affective, social) categories, and teachers can explicitly develop students' strategy use across the four language skills.
Oxford, R. L. (1990). Language learning strategies: What every teacher should know. Heinle & Heinle.
Metacognition in second language learning involves five interrelated components (preparing and planning for learning, selecting and using strategies, monitoring strategy use, orchestrating strategies, and evaluating strategy use), and developing this self-regulation is among the most essential skills teachers can help second language learners develop.
Anderson, N. J. (2002). The role of metacognition in second language teaching and learning (ERIC Digest ED463659). ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED463659.pdf [link]
Higher-order academic and cognitive proficiencies form a common underlying proficiency that transfers across a bilingual learner's languages, so strategies developed in the home language can support second language learning.
Cummins, J. (2000). Language, power and pedagogy: Bilingual children in the crossfire. Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781853596773 [link]
Sources reviewed by an independent second-language-acquisition specialist and an adversarial citation audit.
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