As with many language teachers, it took me a long time to make sense of the concepts of learning strategies and learning styles, and to understand the direct impact of these concepts on my teaching. At first, I thought of these ideas as relevant only to researchers interested in describing language acquisition and not to teachers who have the daily concerns of planning classes, motivating and interacting with their students. In graduate school, I was required to read and analyze the "good learner studies" (e.g. Rubin, 1975). Try as I might, I didn't really appreciate how knowing "what successful learners do" would directly help me in my teaching since I believed that good learners would result from good teaching: my lesson planning, my activities, my teaching skill. I wanted to learn how to be a better teacher, not just a better observer.