Week 7 Learner Autonomy

With the development of science and technology, knowledge is being replaced faster and faster. The students nowadays must be cultivated into lifelong learners to adjust themselves to the times of knowledge explosion. Therefore, autonomous learning is becoming more and more important in learning.

First let's know what the meaning of “autonomous learning” is. According to Holec, “autonomy” is defined as “the ability to take charge of one's own learning”. [1](p6) Furthermore, Dickinson accepts the definition of autonomy as a “situation in which the learner is totally for all of the decisions concerned with his or her learning and implementation of those decisions.” [1](p6) From these two definitions, we can see that the learners must be independent thinkers, and should have a clear view of the whole learning process, including the purpose of learning, the aim of learning, the way of learning, the choice of materials in learning, etc. In another words, it includes everything concerned with learning.

In this process, the teacher's role has changed. We have to admit that the teachers' privileged and centered position in teaching is being challenged. Yes, teachers are no longer the only experts in imparting knowledge, but just organizers in classroom teaching activities.

The students' role in classroom teaching has changed, too. First, the students should be active learners rather than passive receivers. They must know what to do and where to go under the guidance of the teacher. They must be industrious enough to consult the reference books or surf on the Internet so as to gain some knowledge on their own. Second, the students should be active participants or performers in class. It's time for the students to show themselves and to give a full play to their abilities. Third, the students themselves should realize very clearly that it is themselves not the teachers that should take whole responsibility for their learning because they are afforded the opportunities to engage in self-generated, personally relevant communication which involves a wide range of motivations, functions, and meanings that may be very useful in the development of language learning.                                            
 In order to become an excellent student, he or she should have the following characteristics:

-Learn how to learn autonomously under the guidance of the teacher                                                               -Be able to use different channels to get as much information as possible;                                                        

- Be active in the process of classroom learning;                                                                                             -Be ready to take certain charge of his or her own learning;                                                                            -Overcome the complete dependency on teachers;                                                                           

 -Learn to impose his or her self-discipline;                                                                                                                     

- Learn to monitor his or her own learning process.

So while teaching, the teacher should design his or her teaching plan elaborately to attract the students to be involved in the teaching activities.

1 Set up classroom collaborative learning 

The whole class can be divided into several fixed groups, each of whom has 4 or 6 members. Whenever the discussion topic is given in class, the leader of each group is responsible for organizing the heated discussion within the group, and every member in the group is encouraged to participate, then the representative of the group will deliver their speech in the presence of the whole class. Sometimes, the groups are asked to choose their own topic for study, then after class, they are willing to proceed to a probing investigation on that topic and prepare the report to the whole class next time.

2 Choose the charming topics for discussion

 If the teacher wants to involve all the students into the discussion, he or she must choose a good topic, which can arouse the students' interests, and which is easy for them to find more information concerned. Otherwise, the class discussion would fall into an awkward situation at a time.

3   Mobilize the enthusiasm of the whole class by top students

4   Organize a variety of classroom activities                                                                                                  In order to make the class lively and attractive, the teacher should adopt different methods and organize various activities to draw students' attention of learning.  The students who engaged in self-paced learning-by-doing with an interactive environment can become independent learners who are usually labeled “knowledge navigators”.

I consider this problem to be of great importance. It's not easy to teach students to speak foreign language but it's more difficult to teach them to be autonomous.  We need to teach our students how to be responsible for their own learning. One way of doing this is teaching them proper ways to study. Our task is to show them all possible ways and let them choose their beat one. With the growth of web 2.0 it is easier than ever for learners to achieve autonomy but it does need us to point them in the right direction. The best way to make them work on their own is to relate the learning to their lives. No one is going to want to learn anything if they don't see how it impacts them.

References:  What Is Learner Autonomy and How Can It Be Fostered? by Dimitrios Thanasoulas looks at an essential component of a self-access center: a self-directed learner. http://iteslj.org/Articles/Thanasoulas-Autonomy.html
Learner Autonomy: Bird-in-the-hand or Bird-in-the-bush? Samuel Sheu looks at the difficulties in encouraging learner autonomy in Taiwan's highly constrained educational system http://coyote.miyazaki-mu.ac.jp/learnerdev/LLE/8.1/sheuE.html 
Interconnections: Learner Autonomy Teacher Autonomy http://coyote.miyazaki-mu.ac.jp/learnerdev/LLE/8.1/smithE.html