A theoretical inquiry on the meaning of ‘strategies’ and the considerations for applying them in the 2022 revised English curriculum: Focusing on elementary and middle schools

This study is a theoretical inquiry on the term ‘strategies’, which appears in the official document of the 2022 revised English curriculum for elementary and middle schools in Korea. Although this term has been quite frequently investigated in the academic field of second language acquisition since the 1970s, it has not been fairly emphasized in the previous curricula probably because the teachability of strategies is not firmly established. As a result of a literature review, this study shows that despite the ambiguity of the definition of the term, strategies are generally considered as either L2 learners’ communication strategies (CS) to solve communication breakdowns or as their learning strategies (LS) to efficiently acquire knowledge. It also displays that strategies in the new curriculum turn out to be more LS than CS, both of which should be well instructed and evaluated in public schools under the new curriculum. This study then presents some significant considerations about how to teach and evaluate strategies. Unlike linguistic knowledge, strategies can be seen as procedural knowledge. Therefore, strategies should be treated in a similar manner to knowledge from the affective domain. English teachers are strongly advised to teach strategies according to L2 learners’ individual aptitudes and preferences, and to use processfocused assessment.