The present work aims at investigating in which way the students of Letters majoring in English, of an intensive course at Universidade Federal do Pará – Altamira, apprehend autonomous practices, making use of learning strategies to improve oral performance. When they come back to the academy, after the periods without classes, the students say they feel unable to have an effective oral participation during classes. Thus, when coming back to the university, after the periods without classes, the students feel incapable of participating effectively in class orally exposing their ideas. This way, the purpose of this research is to give instructions to the learners, so that they can improve their oral skills practices through the use of learning strategies. The methodology in this research is action research with a qualitative approach. The data were collected by means of narratives, questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews. Eight out of 24 students participated of this research. They were at the second year of the course. The data were collected during July and August, 2011 and January and February, 2012. The results showed that the strategies instruction was relevant to students so that they could become more aware and more proficient of the oral practice during and after the period without classes. In addition, some students began to use other strategies autonomously than those already used before. They also started teaching strategies to other learners. Some students revealed they remained with the use of the same strategies that they had already used.
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