Discussion Issues raised in strategy instructions and
possible implications for further research. A
considerable number of issues emerge when
teaching strategies associated with such problems
as curriculum and text requirements, a shortage
of time for strategy instruction, high risk tests and
some learners’ irresponsibility for learning, large
class size, less administrative support, teachers’
lack of knowledge about language learning
strategy instructions [34]. How to integrate
cognitive, metacognitive, and social-affective
strategies into classroom instructional activities
remains one of the challenging questions because
three types of strategies should be integrated
in such a way that could enhance learners’
academic performance, motivation and self
efficacy believes. Teachers combine L1 and
L2 or use L2 to provide models explicitly but
there is less evidence which of them is the most
useful. Strategy intervention studies should
require not only pre and post test analysis on
measuring relationships between experimental
and control group learners’ metacognitive and
cognitive strategy use but also there is a need
for assessing their motivation, self-efficacy, text
comprehension performance to identify whether
there is a significance difference between them
[35].
Oxford points out issues concerned with
negative effect of strategy instructions on
students’ academic achievements: 1) insufficient
time allocation for strategy training by teachers;
2) assignment tasks are either easy or difficult;
3) strategy trainings are not incorporated into
classroom settings regularly; 4) teachers’ lack
of knowledge about measurement of students’
current strategy use before training; 5) two
key factors are omitted by teachers: to take
learners’ learning styles into consideration when
choosing tasks to motivate them on the one
hand, on the on the other hand, teaching them
to employ unfamiliar but effective strategies [36].
O’Malley et al. argue that learner characteristics
including age, sex, learners’ positions and prior
educational and cultural background cannot
be overemphasized alongside with motivation
which is valuable to establish positive attitude
toward the strategic learning process, otherwise
instructional research may end in a failure.
Review on research articles on EFL and ESL
students’ strategy use revealed that students were
not provided with multiple set of challenging
strategies which could satisfy their needs, and
mostly they practiced one and the same strategies
throughout the lessons. The raised question is
why teachers picked up these sets of strategies
without identifying students’ learning barriers
and needs [37]. Therefore, Oxford suggests that it
is crucial for teachers to identify learners’ current
strategies use, learning barriers and needs before
strategy instruction. Likewise, it is of great
importance to consider learners’ preferences and
choices and include activities aligned with their
actual strategies use, learning styles, cultural
and task preferences. Introducing new higher
order cognitive strategies fitting to task demands
should be taken into consideration to expand
strategy repertoire.