Autonomy in Language Education

Mostafa Younesi, Iran

Mostafa Younesi recived his Master of Science in English language education from university of Semnan, Iran. His current interests include researching on English language education and designing EGP courses for students . E-mail: m_yoonesi@yahoo.co.uk

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Abstract
Introduction
What is autonomy?
Why is autonomy important?
Fundemental conditions to develop autonomy
Practical techniques to develop autonomy in classroom
Conclusion
References

Abstract

Inefficacy of teacher-centered methods in language learning and the need to provide conditions for learners to take responsibility for their own learning were approved many years ago. Many researchers (Onozawa,2010, Norlida & Yaakub 2004, Hung, 2009) emphasized on the positive effect of learners' autonomy on the process of language learning. However, it is very difficult for teachers to develop autonomy in the classroom especially when learners are used to traditional methods and techniques that teachers play the main role. This article tries to introduce learners' autonomy and reminds the importance of autonomy and its effect on the process of language learning. In addition, to develop learners' autonomy in the classroom, this article suggests some practical techniques. Key words: autonomy, discovery learning, self-instruction

Introduction

One of the main purposes of an educational program is to enable the learners to use whatever they learn in their own life. Teacher centered classroom is not a successful experience to undertake this responsibility. Students can learn and use whatever they learn in a real situation if they participate actively in the process of learning. Psychologically speaking, this is a reality which is emphasized by constructivist theory which is the basis of the concept of autonomy. The main underlying assumption of constructivism is that individuals are actively involved right from birth in constructing personal meaning, that is to say their personal understanding from their experience (Williams & Burden, 1997). In fact, constructivists believe that everyone makes his own sense of the world. They assert that events carry no meaning by themselves and their meaning depends on how individuals apply them."We differ from each other in the way we construct events and we have different approaches to our anticipation of the same events" (Kelly, 1953, p. 53). The result of this theory in learning process is to take account of the learners as individuals actively involved in constructing meaning. When learners learn new language, they sense the language input that surrounds them as well as the tasks presented to them (Williams & Burden, 1997). Consequently, "learning processes are individual, based on the learner's pre-knowledge and can only be monitored by the learner himself" (Benson, 2006, p. 02). Piaget in his theory of cognitive development asserts that humans can not be "given" information, which they immediately understand and use. Instead, they must "construct" their own knowledge (Norlida& Yaakub 2004). Thus, the learning and teaching of EFL maybe considered less than efficient if it is not based on learner-centered approaches and learner autonomy. In fact, acting autonomously is the necessary condition for a successful and intelligent learner.

What is autonomy?

The concept of autonomy is difficult to define properly. This difficulty is related to two related assumptions: one is related to degrees of autonomy and the other one is related to the behavior of autonomous learners that take different forms according to their ages, how far they have progressed with learning , what they perceive their immediate learning needs to be, and so on ( Little, cited in Benson,2006,). The most famous definition of autonomy is Holic's (1985). He defines autonomy as the ability of learners to take charge of their own learning. By taking charge of one’s own learning, learners hold the responsibility for all the decisions concerning all aspects of the learning, they determine the objectives, contents and progression and select methods and techniques to be used. They monitor the procedure of acquisition properly and evaluate what has been acquired. According to Holic, this ability is an inborn ability must be acquired by natural means or by formal learning. In this definition the social aspect of learning is neglected. Dam (1995) indicates that autonomous learners want to act independently and in co-operation with others, as a socially responsible person. In other words, the concept of autonomy encompasses collaboration and interdependence (Little, 1991 cited in Littlewood, 1999). Little (1991) states that "learner autonomy is not a methodology or simply self-instruction. It is an educational goal and it is an interactive and social process" (p.05).

As a whole, many researchers take autonomy as an attribute of the learners. For example, little (1991) states that “autonomy is a capacity for detachment, critical reflection, decision making and independent action" (p. 04). Nevertheless, some other takes autonomy as a situation. For example, Dickinson (1987) asserts that “autonomous learners are responsible for all decisions on their own learning and the implementation of those decisions (as cited in Lamb & Reinders, 2007).

Autonomy should be viewed from multiple perspectives, e.g., technical, psychological, socio-cultural and political-critical (Benson, & Voller, 1997). According to Benson (2001) the concept of autonomy is context dependent. It can take different forms for different individuals in different contexts and situations. Little [1991] declares that the autonomous learner "will develop a … psychological relation to the process and content of his learning ... displayed both in the way he or she learns and … transfers what has been learned to wider contexts" ( p.4).

Littlewood (1999) in his model predicated the word autonomy in three related domains: Autonomy as learner, autonomy, as communicator and autonomy as a person. To be autonomous in these domains, he asserted that students should have ability and willingness. Ability depends on possessing the knowledge about the alternative choices available and the skills to carry on the choices. Willingness depends on the motivation and confidence of the learner to take responsibility for the choices required. All of these four components need to be present together. Therefore, motivation, confidence, skill and knowledge are necessary for all three kinds of autonomy. Each of these three domains depends on different criteria. To be autonomous as leaner, learners should be able to work independently and use appropriate strategies. To be autonomous as person, learners should be able to create personal learning contexts and express their personal meaning and to be able to be autonomous as communicator; learner should have linguistic creativity and use appropriate communicative strategies.

Benson and Voller (1997) related the word of autonomy to five different concepts:

1. Situation in which students study on their own.
2. An inborn capacity which is supported by institutional situation.
3. Student responsibility for their own learning.
4. The right of learner to determine the direction of learning.
5. A set of skills which can be learned and applied in self-directed learning.

Benson ( 2006) states that autonomy is not synonym with self- instruction, 'self- access', 'self-study', 'out-of-class learning' or 'distance learning'. He asserts that " These terms basically describe various ways and degrees of learning by one’s self, whereas autonomy refers to the abilities and attitudes (or whatever we think the capacity to control one’s own learning consists of" ( p.01) .In other words, learning in isolation is not the same with the ability to direct one's own learning. Benson states that not only there is not necessary condition between autonomy and self- instruction but also self- instruction may hinder autonomy. He emphasizes on the presence and contribution of teacher toward the smooth progress of the process while preceding control to the learners.

Autonomy is a gradual, individual and never ending process of self - discovery. It is a process which a person gradually discovers what autonomy is. An autonomous learner acts independently and in cooperation with others, he participates actively in social processes of his learning, he interprets new information according to his background knowledge, he knows exactly how to learn and how to reflect critically on the process of learning. He can make correct decisions during the process of learning, he can act independently when it is necessary and he can develop this knowledge to real life situation. Little ( 1991) states " The capacity for autonomy will be displayed both in the way the learner learns and in the way he or she transfers what has been learned to wider contexts"( p.4).

Classroom is a good situation to exercise autonomy because students can collaborate with other learners and the teacher can support them when they need. Nunan (1997) found Classroom is the best environment to encourage learners to move towards autonomy. He summarized five levels of autonomy that he claimed learning process tasks are integrated with learning content tasks in these levels and introduced examples of activities in each level as shown in Table1.

Table1: Nunan's levels of implementation. (cited in Onozawa,2010)

Why is autonomy important?

According to Benson (2006) "Autonomous learners have acquired the learning strategies, the knowledge about learning and the attitudes that enable them to use these skills and knowledge confidently, flexibly, appropriately and independently of a teacher. Therefore, they are directly involved in their own learning process and the knowledge construction is based on their learning needs" (p.34).

Dam (1995) in reply to the question of why autonomy is desirable, important and even necessary states that " giving the learners a share of responsibility for planning and conducting teaching led to better learning and increase the capacity to evaluate the learning process. She added: awareness of how to learn facilitate and influence what is being learnt and gives an improved insight into how to learn" (p. 82). Independence in learning is vital for effective functioning in society and maximizing the learners' life choices. Therefore, they should be papered for this rapidly changing future. In recent century, learning process is not limited to the classroom environment. The advent of different kinds of learning like distance learning, self-instruction learning, out of class learning and tandem learning in which ‘two people who are learning each others’ language work together to help one another make it necessary for learners to practice autonomy in their educational settings. More over, autonomy enhances the learners' intrinsic motivation. According to Deci (1995), when autonomous learners accept responsibility for their own learning and try to develop the skills of reflective self-management in learning; they are intrinsically motivated. On the one hand, success in learning strengthens their intrinsic motivation. On the other hand their decision about their own learning strengths their security. This matter leads to students' inclination to take risk. Eventually, it is necessary for teachers to provide conditions for students to think and act autonomously. They should help learners to collect, organize and manipulate data for themselves.

Fundemental conditions to develop autonomy

A teacher who wants to train autonomous learners should know that it is not an easy task to change students which are accustomed to the teacher-centered methods. Autonomous learners should be active in the whole process of language learning and take responsibility for their learning. Students won't be autonomous unless their theories about the process of learning, their attitude to learning and their behavioral patterns in an educational environment change. Johnson (2004) stated that changing these conditions depends on changing affective, cognitive and behavior system, otherwise any kind of changes would be temporary. Also, he emphasized on a social learning environment that should be supportive, accepting and caring. In this environment, students are free to experiment new behaviors, attitudes and action theories. Therefore, an effective experimental learning course in which students can discover these three main conditions is helpful. Obviously, students participate actively through discovery changes in the whole process of changing from dependent learner into autonomous one. Also, the course should be designed in a way that students become aware of pedagogical goals, different contents and strategies, language learning theories and themselves as learners. In addition, they should have enough motivation to modify and adopt their goals, styles and strategies and create their own goals and plans for self - directed learning. Also, the course should reflect the learner’s goals since the starting point in this course is not the text book but a learner who has its own history, culture and educational needs. If autonomy in learning is limited to classroom environments and students can't transfer this autonomy to outside learning and independent learning, the whole process of training autonomy in learners would be useless. A course should prepare conditions that student can transcend their autonomy in learning to outside of classroom. If learners want to take charge of their own learning, they should be prepared with real world tasks and also reflect on their own learning, evaluate achievements and draw conclusions. Collaboration is one of fundamental conditions to promote autonomy and the course should provide conditions by which learners could construct their shared learning space collaboratively. The course should be designed in away that there should be room for freedom of choice for individual and groups of learners since in this environment students decide on the direction of the learning process ( Fenner,2000 ). Esch (1996) states that choice, flexibility, adaptability, modifiability, reflectivity and shareability should be existed in an autonomous based classroom. Choice insists that students could choose the options related to learning content and learning methodology. Its materials are designed on which learners adopts their own tactics and reflect on the learning process and the learners should have a share of responsibility for planning and conducting teaching learning activities. Flexibility refers to the possibility of self- repair and change of the options for students. For example they could choose to stop doing an activity and change it to another form. If the materials are categorized to be accessible for students with varying needs the course has adoptability. Modifiability insists on the ability of students to modify the existing materials. Reflectivity emphasizes on the ability of a course to provide conditions for student to reflect on their own leaning, evaluate the outcome and program their future plans and shareability refers to the ability to share activities and problems with others.

In an educational course, Benson (2001) identified autonomy with certain approaches. His first approach is resource based approaches emphasize on independent interaction with learning materials. The second one is technology based approaches emphasize independent interaction with educational technologies. The third one is learner-based approaches emphasize the direct production of behavioral and psychological changes in learner. The forth one is the classroom-based approaches emphasize learner control over the planning and evaluation of classroom learning. The fifth one is Curriculum-based approaches emphasize the learner control to the curriculum as a whole and the last one is teacher - based approaches emphasize the role of teacher and teacher education in the practice of fostering autonomy among learners ( cited in Onzawa, 2010).

Practical techniques to develop autonomy in classroom

Dam (1995) indicates that, in spite of the textbook approach to language teaching involves learning "from the outside in"; that the textbook author's meanings are first learnt and then gradually adapted to the learners' own purposes. The autonomous approach, by contrast, insists that language is learnt partly "from the inside out," as learners attempt to express their own meanings for their own learning purposes. The following techniques help teachers in developing autonomy in a classroom:

1. Questionnaire: Teacher's familiarity with students, their needs and their background knowledge is one of the perquisite conditions to develop autonomy. Moreover, learners' awareness of their conditions, their present competence in different language skills before and after the course, their reflection and analysis of their activities and different processes they used during the course for future educational processes are the other perquisite conditions to develop autonomy. Questionnaire which is administered before or after performing a course can provide is a useful tool to provide these conditions.
2. Text- book: A good text- book can be one of the best tools to provide different choices for students. Moreover, It is an ideal situation in which students can practice how to choose among different suggestions those which are appropriate to their needs, their conditions, etc. In fact, a good text book can help students to practice making choice which is one of the necessary conditions to develop autonomy in an educational environment. Benson (2006) states that a foreign language text book can provide:
   1. Choice of subject-matter
   2. Choice of different types of texts
   3. Choice of different levels
   4. Choice of varying amount (of texts and tasks)
   5. Choice of approach to a text
   6. Choice of tasks
   7. Choice of approach to tasks
   8. Choice of progression
   The first three choices are related to content .If a text can provide learners with different approaches to texts, it will develop diversification and personalization. Also, familiarity with different methods and techniques are the results of choice of tasks and if a text book fits open- ended tasks, students can practice personal interpretation. An autonomous learner has his own personal needs and objectives to learn a language. In a text book learners can use the materials in such a way that they can determine some of their objectives. This entails that the texts and tasks can be used in different ways for different purposes. Learning experience will increase and number of their choices will develop if variety of methods of learning is suggested and appropriate conditions for students to add their own suggestions are provided. In this way they will be able to discover their own learning styles and find strategies which will suit their personal learning process. Also, a text- book can suggest different ways to do a task and eventually prepare learners to develop their personal approaches when they want to choose them in the educational environment.
3. Question and answer: Autonomy is not the same with self- instruction and interaction and collaborative activities can promote autonomy. Question and answer in an interactive environment between teacher and learner or learners themselves helps to develop this important condition. Beside, learner can reflect on their learning experiences and evaluate their learning. Teachers can design appropriate questions which leads student to focus on these perquisite conditions.
4. Writing and speaking about their own experiences: If students learn to write or speak about their learning experiences within the class or when they work collaboratively in their groups, they will develop awareness of their personal process of interpreting and learning, they will reflect on their own learning unconsciously, they will focus on their success and failure and analyze the reasons.
5. Dialogue with unpredictable outcome: In order to further autonomy as a social process, teachers have to give the students a chance to interact with each other. This requires tasks that the dialogue is authentic. In other words, tasks that the outcome is not defined in advance. In fact, the dialogical dialogue with an unpredictable outcome is the only type of classroom dialogue that will further autonomy.
6. The development of E-learning materials: In the realm of language learning, the use of rich media like video and audio recording, animation, different language learning soft wares like "Learn to Speak English" is very helpful to develop autonomy. An example of this kind of learning is provided by Sinclair (2007) who uses a software under the title of BNU teaching grammar unit to teach grammar. By the use of internet through chat, e-mail or voice email such as skype ( www. skype.com), students can communicate with their teacher or with other class mates outside the classroom and develop autonomy. Also, teacher can use of different sites like Quia, Discovery School or The Study Place to create an online class with materials that can be available for students at any time. In recent centuries, many researches have been done to promote the role of computer under the acronym of CALL in the process of language learning and teaching to develop autonomy.
7. Exploratory learning: Allwright and Lenzuen (1997) defined Exploratory Practice as: A sustainable way of carrying out classroom investigations that provides language teachers (and potentially the learners also) with a systematic framework within which to define the areas of language teaching and learning that they wish to explore, to refine their thinking about them, and to investigate them further using familiar classroom activities, rather than ‘academic’ research techniques, as the investigative tools" (as cited in Chuck, 2004, p.01).

Exploratory learning emphasizes on the natural integration of research and pedagogy in the classroom. Two main points are emphasized in this kind of learning: first, promoting student's understanding, second developing language teaching and learning. The quick result of this kind of learning is developing students' meta-cognitive awareness. For example students can be given a questionnaire to raise their awareness of the sort of learners they are or they are given reflection form to give comments on their learning styles (learner awareness). Also, student's oral presentation can indicate the extent of their awareness of the subject (subject awareness). To develop learning process awareness which refers to students' self - assessment, goal setting, monitoring process, evaluating activities and organising time and resource, students are given opportunity to monitor and evaluate their leaning progress in a very systematic way. More over writing learner diary can help raise metacognitive awareness.

Conclusion

Learners' autonomy is very helpful in the process of language learning. An autonomous learner uses every context which is appropriate for learning even those contexts which exist outside the classrooms; in the other word they use their surrounding environment for learning. They develop critical thinking and confidence specially when they want to form and give their opinions, they don’t forget that interacting and mixing with other students is a necessary condition for autonomy, they establish realistic goals, monitor their own learning and reflect and challenge their own attitudes. They are able to take risk in different parts of the learning process. How ever autonomy is a new concept in the educational systems that follows traditional methods for years and if it is developed in these systems, a wonderful evolution happens in the process of language acquisition.

References

Benson, P. (2001). Teaching and researching autonomy in language learning. Harlow, Hong Kong: Longman

Benson, Ph and Voller, P.( 1997): Autonomy and Independence in Language Learning. London: Longman.

Benson, Ph. (2006). Autonomy in language teaching and learning. Cambridge University Press.

Chuck, J. Y. P. (2004). Promoting learner autonomy in the EFL classroom: The exploratory practice way. In Reinders, H; Anderson, H; Hobbs, M; Jones-Parry, J (Eds.). Supporting independent English language learning in the 21st century: Proceedings of the independent learning. Association Conference. pp 57-74. Available online www.independentlearning.org/ila03/ila03_chuk.pdf

Dam, L.(1995) .Learner Autonomy 3: from theory to classroom practice. Dublin: Authentik,

Deci, E. (1995). Why we do what we do: understanding self-motivation. New York: Penguin.

Esch, E. (1996): Promoting learner autonomy: criteria for the selection of appropriate methods. Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press.

Fenner, A-B. (2000). “Learner Autonomy” in A-B Fenner & D. Newby (2000) Approaches to materials design in European textbooks: Implementing principles of authenticity, learner autonomy, cultural awareness. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing.

Holic, H, (1985). On autonomy: Some elementary concept. London: Long man

Hung, J. (2009): Autonomy, agency and identity in foreign language learning and teaching University of Hong Kong.

Johnson, F. (2004). Learner autonomy: From concept to curriculum- the Canada experiment: Working Papers in Language Education. Vol, 1 (2004)

Kelly, G. (1963). A Theory of Personality. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Lamb,T and Reinders, H. (2007). Learner and Teacher Autonomy: Concepts, realities. Amsterdam: Benjamins

Littlewood, W. (1999).’Defining and developing autonomy in East Asian contexts'. Applied Linguistics, 20:1, 71-94.

Little, D. (1991). Learner Autonomy 1: Definitions, Issues and Problems. Dublin: Authentik

Norlida, A , Yaakub.R .(2004) . Towards learner autonomy in teaching English in Malaysia. university science Malaysia. 4th International Symposium on ELT in China, Beijing ( 21-25 May 2004).

Nunan, D (1997). Designing and adapting materials to encourage learner autonomy. In P. Benson & P. Voller (eds.) Autonomy and Independence in Language Learning. London: Longman, pp. 192-203. Longman: London.

Onozawa, Ch.(2010). Promoting autonomy in the language class - how autonomy can be applied in the language class. www.kyoai.ac.jp

Sinclair, B.,( 2007). The teacher as learner: Developing autonomy in an interactive learning environment. Retrieved from www.nottingham.ac.uk/education/people/barbara.sinclair

Williams, M. & Burden, R.L. (1997). Psychology for language teachers: a social constructivist approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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