The use of learning strategies in coursebooks for Turkish and English as a foreign language

Learning strategies are ?specific actions taken by the learner to make learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective, and more transferrable to new situations? according to Oxford (1990:8). It is the learner?s responsibility to select the appropriate strategy or strategy combination to facilitate a learning task. So, a learner needs to be aware of one?s own strategy applications and develop a repertoire of strategies. In Cohen?s (1998: 74) opinion, there are several options for providing strategy training to help learners understand their own learning: the use of learning strategies in a language coursebook is one of the options.The purpose of this research was to investigate the use of language learning strategies in coursebooks for Turkish and English as a foreign language. Yeni Hitit 1 and Total English Elementary cousebooks were chosen for the purpose of a contrastive study. Based on the classification of Chamot and O?Malley, strategies used in the coursebooks were identified and the results were analyzed. It was found that Total English Elementary attached more importance to metacognitive strategies and strategy combinations than Yeni Hitit 1. The percentage of metacognitive strategies in Yeni Hitit 1 was 5.729 % whereas it was 34.494 % in Total English Elementary. This meant that the English book aimed at making students use their metacognitive knowledge much more than the Turkish book. Neither of the coursebooks provided explicit strategy training. They both preferred embedding strategies implicitly. However, the English coursebook gave a brief explanation of only 8 strategies in different tasks via the lifelong learning boxes. Then, students had the chance to apply the strategy. The most important point was that the book didn?t use the word ?strategy? so it may not raise any awareness. Also, there were no activities for students to evaluate their use of the strategy given in the lifelong learning box. The English coursebook provided more types of strategy combinations than the Turkish book. In conclusion, it is the real aim of this study to increase strategy awareness of teachers and coursebook writers so that students of Turkish can be more effective and successful learners.