I think
we are now better equipped to explore the areas where we, as teachers of
English, can try to promote this transfer between languages. To sum up, I
think we can try to promote the transfer of
•knowledge, both specific, that is,
relevant to the individual languages, and general, that is, relevant to language
in general terms: what we need to do is work in the area of language
awareness;
•skills, in the sense of the ability to
turn knowledge into strategies to solve problems: what we need to do is work
in the area of learning awareness;
•and finally, beliefs and attitudes,
what we might call readiness to learn, which is both a cognitive and an
affective issue: what we need to do is work in the area of learner
awareness – in this case, raising our students’ consciousness of their
own strengths and weaknesses, of their own personal profile as language
learners.
We are
well aware that if we do this we are trying to achieve something more that
the simple sum of individual parts – knowledge, skills and beliefs and
attitudes, when woven together, create a new competence – learning to
learn – perhaps the most ambitious aim at school today, but also one I
think we cannot afford to ignore.
