Helping Students Cultivate and Develop Autonomous Learning

Helping Students Cultivate and Develop Autonomous Learning

Shanghai No.4 Middle School  Zhang Zhimei

   Everyone knows school education is very important and useful. Yet no one can learn everything from school. A teacher, no matter how much he knows, cannot teach his students everything they want to know. The teacher’s job is to show his students how to learn and how to think. So much more is to be learned outside by students themselves.

    English is the most widely used language in the world. Nowadays, a large number of people learn English in China. English has become one of the most important subjects that the students must take at school. I’m now teaching in a junior middle school. My junior 3 students take six English lessons each week. I observed my students seldom spoke English out of class. They had their lessons passively, not actively. When they were asked questions, they seldom raised hands and just kept silent even if they knew the answers. Though my students have learned English since they were Grade 3 students in the primary school, they cannot speak English very fluently. When they were asked to write a short passage of at least 70 words, they made a lot of mistakes in grammar or on spelling. Sometimes they made the same mistakes again and again. So it’s quite difficult for students to learn English well and it’s also quite difficult for us teachers to teach English. Confucius believed that it was important for students to learn of their own initiatives as learning should be a process of independent exploring and understanding but in reality greater importance has been attached to the teacher’s role as the only source of knowledge, the instructor, the authority and the judge. Students in China are generally very teacher-dependent and lack the initiative to implement learning on their own. To many of them the classroom is the only place where they learn English.

    Autonomy in language learning has been a heated topic of research within the field of applied linguistics in Great Britain and America for the last two decades. It’s quite necessarily feasible and also challenging to promote autonomous learning in school. Autonomous learning is relatively new concept to EFL teachers and learning in China. But how can it be developed in an input-poor environment? What should we English teachers do to help our students to cultivate autonomous learning both in and after school? How can we teachers help students to make full use of the information from the Internet? I think it’s a serious and important problem for us English teachers.

One of the definitions of autonomy in Collins Cobuild English Dictionary reads “ The ability to make your own decisions about what to do rather than being influenced by someone else or told what to do.”

Similarly, Holec (1981), one of the earliest advocates of autonomy in language teaching has defined it as the “ability to take care of one’s own learning”.

Young (1986) suggestions, “The fundamental idea in autonomy is that of authoring one’s own world without being subject to the will of others.”

  Dickinson (1995) considers autonomy as “both an attitude towards learning and a capacity for independent learning”. He elaborates the attitude as responsibility the learner is prepared to take for decision-making in the learning process. That is, “they can identify, formulate and change goals to suit their own learning needs and interests and are able to use learning strategies and monitor their own learning”.

Littlewood (1996) sees autonomy mainly as “learners’ ability and willingness to make choices independently” and explains that the “ability depends on possessing both knowledge about the alternatives from which choices have to be made and necessary skills for carrying out whatever choices seem most appropriate. Willingness depends on having both the motivation and confidence to take responsibility for the choices required.” He emphasizes: “Students’ willingness to act  independently depends on the level of their motivation and confidence; students’ ability to act independently depends on the level of knowledge and skills. ”

Benson (1997) identifies three basic areas of autonomy in language learning:

1) autonomy as the act of learning on one’s own and the technical ability to do so;

2) autonomy as the internal psychological capacity to self-direct one’s own learning;

3) autonomy as control over the content and processes of one’s own learning.

According to Wenden, the key components of autonomy are:

1) attitudes, i.e. learners are willing to adopt a positive attitude towards learning by accepting the responsibility for their own learning and taking initiatives in learning.

2) capacity, i.e. learners develop the ability or knowledge and strategies necessary to carry out self-directed learning tasks independently of the teacher.

Without external supports, such as the teacher, the facilities and the learning materials, especially at the early stage of the development of autonomy, it is almost impossible to initiate the first two components and bring out internal changes, i.e. attitudes ability, to learners.

In order to know the students’ attitude toward learner autonomy, a survey was made through a questionnaire among my students. The results are satisfactory enough because learner autonomy is attractive to learners. The majority chose partial autonomy. First of all, as teachers, we should first cultivate learners’ self- confidence. A person without confidence cannot succeed. So I always encourage my students to ask me, or each other questions. During my teaching I often do such steps as the following:

New words: don’t always tell the class what they mean, and have the students try to work out the meaning of the new words for themselves, using context clues.

Co-operative learning: whenever possible, ask students to find answers themselves, in groups and pairs as well as individually. Then ask them for their conclusions. Direct students to share their knowledge; play down competition among students; get my class to think of themselves as a team.

Dialogues and role-play: I try to involve my students in a situation which comes as close as possible to being a “real” one. So involvement is the key to the success of role-play. The whole students are divided into groups and pairs so that every student can seize their opportunity to speak. This is a very effective and practical way to develop students’ speaking ability.

Do not always insist on accuracy in language use: focus on what students are saying. To them, the message-the content-of their language is more important than the form.

To get students to make their mistakes work for them: let students catch and correct each other’s errors; do not always give them the correct form, encourage students to make lists of their common errors and work on them on their own.

To develop autonomy in reading—readings on the topic chosen: try to encourage students to read widely on their own, using school or public libraries as available. Encourage students to read newspapers, books, listen or watch broadcasts, or get information from the Internet. At the beginning of the term, I asked my students for 15 topics they are interested in. The whole students in class formed 10 groups, 5-6 members in each, and chose a topic for their own group. Throughout the reading, the students decided their work partner, the topic, materials, presentation, audience involvement, etc. Right after the presentation, the group first did self-assessment; then the classmates evaluated their work; last, I—the teacher gave comments and a score for the whole group.

    At the end of this term, I found the students become more interested in English. They were more active in class. They’d like to raise questions both in and after class. I felt glad to cope with them. Through the group work, the members co-operated, influenced and stimulated each other. There was more interaction among members because they assumed different roles and shared responsibilities. There was also a team spirit since they all worked toward the same goal.

    Students used libraries, books and the Internet for the required materials. They tried every means to get the knowledge themselves instead of waiting for it. In addition, they analyzed the information and selected what material best fitted their presentations.

   The presentations proceed naturally in class because the class doesn’t share the information one particular group has collected. Their in-class presentation task can fill in an information gap so that the class benefit from one group’s work.

    In conclusion, I can say that the learner-centered approach is generally accepted by EFL teachers. Teachers are no longer in their dominate position as lecturer in class while learners are not passive receivers any more. Teachers must play different roles in class as guides, facilitators, organizers and anticipators. The teachers’ job is more challenging in helping students grow up as creative and independent learners for life. Teachers should design and organize various activities to prepare students for more independence and responsibility. There’s an old Chinese saying: “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach him how to fish, and you feed him for a life time.” Learner autonomy, as a lifelong mode of learning, can play an important role in ensuring that academic development continues well beyond the classroom. So, we should push the idea forward as far as we can go now.

References

Benson, P. and P. Voller. (eds.) 1997. Introduction: Autonomy and Independence in Language learning. New York: Addison Wesley Longman.

Brown, H. Dodglas. 1994. Teaching By Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Dickinson, L. 1987. Self-instruction in Language Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University.

Holic, H. 1981. Autonomy and Foreign Language Learning. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Li Ming, 1999. “Learner autonomy and the need for learner training in ELT in China”, Teaching English in China, Issue 33, March, 1999.

Littlewood, W. 1996. “Autonomy: an autonomy and a framework”, System, 24/4: 427-435.

McDevitt, B. 1997. “Learner autonomy and the need for learning training”, Language Learning Joumal, September.

Nunan, D. 1989. Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom. Cambridge University Press