'56 Strategic Discourses: Language learning strategies under severe time constraints
Martha Nyikos, Indiana U., IN (nyikos@indiana.edu)

Most strategic languages today are taught under severe time constraints due to political and budgetary exigencies. The teaching strategies used with the 1956 refugees in US State Department sponsored programs are applicable to today’s heritage and strategic language teaching situations. This session will outline teaching approaches which were specifically developed for the Hungarian refugees (gained from retrospective data). Parallels will be drawn to effective teaching today and the theories which support these ways of teaching with particular emphasis on ways students can be taught to learn in a self-directed way, using learner strategies. These strategies enable the language learner to deal independently with linguistic tasks. Yet the strategies that learners employ to process, comprehend, recall and use information are often ignored in the dissemination of information on how to teach.

In intensive programs, such as refugee intake programs, or summer heritage language programs or Defense Department intensive language teaching situations, learners must become strategic in learning how to learn a new language. A brief summary of research findings about what learners actually do when processing language on their own will be reviewed. This presentation will look specifically at the strategies successful 1956 learners and teachers applied that made learning faster, more personally relevant and usable to individual learners in a sensitive political atmosphere.