Definition:
Rebecca Oxford is an American applied linguist and professor whose research has focused on language learning strategies, learner autonomy, anxiety, and the psychology of language learners. She is best known for creating the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) — one of the most widely used instruments in applied linguistics research — and for her book Language Learning Strategies: What Every Teacher Should Know (1990), which shaped how the field conceptualized learner behavior for decades.
Academic Background
Oxford completed advanced degrees in educational psychology and linguistics, with an emphasis on individual learner differences. She has held faculty positions at multiple universities, including the University of Alabama and the University of Maryland. Her interdisciplinary background — bridging psychology, education, and linguistics — is reflected in the scope of her research.
Language Learning Strategies
Oxford defines language learning strategies as steps taken by learners to enhance their own language acquisition and use — deliberate, conscious actions learners take to improve comprehension, retention, or production.
Her framework classifies strategies into two main groups:
Direct Strategies
Strategies that directly involve the target language:
- Memory strategies: Creating mental linkages, applying images and sounds, reviewing well (e.g., keyword method, spaced review)
- Cognitive strategies: Practicing, receiving and sending messages, analyzing and reasoning, creating structure for input/output
- Compensation strategies: Guessing intelligently, overcoming limitations in speaking and writing (e.g., using circumlocution, borrowing words)
Indirect Strategies
Strategies that support learning without directly involving the target language:
- Metacognitive strategies: Centering your learning, arranging and planning, evaluating — essentially thinking about and managing one’s own learning process
- Affective strategies: Lowering anxiety, encouraging yourself, taking your emotional temperature
- Social strategies: Asking questions, cooperating with others, empathizing
The Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL)
The SILL is a 50-item self-report questionnaire that Oxford developed to measure how frequently learners use each of the six strategy types. Learners rate each item on a 5-point Likert scale (never ? always). The SILL has been translated into dozens of languages and used in hundreds of studies across the globe.
It has been applied to investigate:
- Whether strategy use correlates with proficiency or success
- How strategy profiles differ by learner age, L1 background, learning context, or gender
- Whether strategy instruction improves learning outcomes
Critiques of the SILL
- Heavy reliance on self-report makes results vulnerable to response bias and social desirability effects
- The categorization system has been criticized as overlapping and theoretically inconsistent
- Whether strategy use causes better outcomes or merely characterizes better learners is difficult to disentangle
Despite these criticisms, the SILL remains among the most cited instruments in SLA research.
Contributions to Learner Autonomy and Affect
Oxford’s work extended into two important adjacent areas:
Learner Autonomy
Oxford argued that developing strategic learners requires fostering learner autonomy — the capacity to take responsibility for one’s own learning. Her strategy taxonomy was designed as a tool to help learners become more self-directed and reflective about their study habits.
Language Anxiety
Oxford has written extensively on language anxiety — the feelings of tension, apprehension, and self-doubt that can interfere with language learning performance. She and Jill Ehrman developed the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLACAS) variants and contributed to understanding the relationship between anxiety, strategy use, and proficiency.
Influence on Language Teaching
Oxford’s work had substantial impact on:
- Strategy-Based Instruction (SBI): Incorporating explicit strategy training into language classrooms
- Curriculum design: Programs organized around developing learner independence rather than rote instruction
- Learner difference research: How age, personality, and background affect strategic and affective approaches to learning
Research
- Oxford, R. L. (1990). Language Learning Strategies: What Every Teacher Should Know. Heinle & Heinle.
- Oxford, R. L. (2011). Teaching and Researching Language Learning Strategies. Pearson Longman.
- Oxford, R. L. (2017). Teaching and Researching Language Learning Strategies: Self-Regulation in Context (2nd ed.). Routledge.
- Oxford, R. L., & Ehrman, M. E. (1995). Adults’ language learning strategies in an intensive foreign language program in the United States. System, 23(3), 359–386.
Criticisms
Oxford’s Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) — the most widely used instrument in language learning strategy research — has been subject to sustained methodological criticism. The SILL relies entirely on self-report, and researchers including Dörnyei (2005) have argued that learners’ self-assessments of strategy use are often inaccurate: learners may over-report strategies they believe are desirable or under-report habitual strategies they no longer consciously notice.
The six-category taxonomy (memory, cognitive, compensation, metacognitive, affective, social) has been criticized for theoretically inconsistent categorization — some strategies fit multiple categories, and the boundaries between categories are difficult to operationalize reliably across languages and contexts. More fundamentally, strategy research faces a causation problem: correlational findings showing that successful learners use more strategies do not establish that strategy use causes success. It is equally plausible that higher proficiency enables a wider range of strategy deployment. Macaro (2006) proposed that the field should move toward experimental designs that test whether teaching specific strategies produces measurable acquisition gains, rather than relying on correlational SILL data.
Related Terms
- Language Learning Strategies — the full treatment of the concept she shaped
- Learner Autonomy — a companion concept often developed alongside strategy training
- Language Anxiety — another area of her research
- Metacognitive Awareness — central to her indirect strategy taxonomy
- Keyword Method — an example of the memory strategies she catalogued