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Learner Autonomy 1: Definitions, Issues and Problems

January 1991

Publisher: Authentik

Authors:

David Little

Trinity College Dublin

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Learner

autonomy

1: Definitions,

issues and

problems

David Little

Authentik

Books for language teachers

For Jean

Reprinted 1995, 1999

Authentik Language Learning Resources Ltd

is a campus company of Trinity College, Dublin

ISBN 1 871730 02 3

Typeset in Helvetica and Palatino

Foreword

The Authentik newspapers and cassettes have helped to

promote learner autonomy in a variety of learning con-

texts, so when Authentik decided to launch a series of

short handbooks for language teachers, autonomy was an

obvious topic with which to begin. The present volume is

concerned with basic definitions, the principal sources of

autonomy theory, and the broad implications of the the-

ory for pedagogical practice. Two further volumes on

learner autonomy are in preparation: an account of suc-

cessful classroom practice by Leni Dam and proposals for

the development of successful learning strategies by Leslie

Dickinson.

The present volume owes its general structure to a

lecture I gave at a conference on autonomy in language

learning organized by CILT in January 1990. I am grateful

to Alan Moys and Lid King for inviting me to give the

lecture and thus providing an initial stimulus.

Over a number of years I have benefited greatly from

discussions of autonomy, self-direction, learner-counsel-

ling, and related issues with Leni Dam, Seán Devitt, Leslie

Dickinson, Edith Esch, Philip Riley, and David Singleton.

I am particularly grateful to Leni Dam, Seán Devitt and

David Singleton for reading and commenting on the first

draft of the book.

The book was written in the summer of 1990 during a

two-month stay at the University of Hannover. My thanks

are due to the authorities of Trinity College, Dublin, for

granting me leave of absence; to the Arts and Social

Sciences Benefactions Fund, Trinity College, for financial

support; and to Claus Gnutzmann for inviting me to be a

guest in his department and arranging for me to stay in the

Leibnizhaus, a remarkable haven of peace in the middle of

a busy city.

Finally, I am grateful to my family for agreeing to do

without me for two months; and above all to my wife, not

only for her unwavering support in this as in all my other

undertakings, but more especially for a tutorial on the role

of autonomy in successful child development that began

over twenty years ago.

Dublin David Little

February 1991

Contents

1Preliminaries 1

Technical terms and the

necessity of theory 1

What autonomy is not 3

A provisional definition

of autonomy 4

The structure of this book 5

2Autonomy as an educational goal 6

Autonomy in adult education 6

Autonomy and schooling 8

From the politics to the

psychology of autonomy 11

3Autonomy and the psychology

of learning and teaching 15

Learning in child development 15

The psychology of personal

constructs 16

Personal and constructs and

learning 18

Teachers have personal

constructs too 21

4Autonomy in language

acquisition and language use 23

First language development 23

Second language acquisition 25

Implications for language teaching 27

Engaging learners’ personal

constructs 32

5Autonomy in two kinds of

learning environment 36

The argument so far 36

Autonomous learning outside the

full-time educational system 38

Autonomous learning at school 40

6 Issues and problems in the

implementation of autonomy 44

The teacher 44

The learner 46

The process of learning 48

Learner training 51

Conclusion 56

Suggestions for further reading 58

References 61

Chapter 1

Preliminaries

Technical terms and the necessity of theory

When we first enter a field of specialist knowledge or

experience, we expect to encounter words that are either

new to us or else used in an unfamiliar sense. Indeed, our

initiation into the field depends crucially on our coming to

understand the network of concepts that underlies its

specialist vocabulary. But if we remain in the field for any

length of time, we are likely to find that the meaning of

certain key terms is constantly developing and expanding

as the underlying concepts are refined and elaborated.

This is true of the most abstruse jargon; it is also true of

words in common use that have been appropriated for

some special purpose.

The definition and redefinition of terms is a central

concern of all theory; for only by a process of constant

reflection and clarification can we hope to maintain an

adequately coherent overview of any field of activity.

Practitioners of all kinds must also be theorists in this

sense, if they wish to avoid fossilization. The recent his-

tory of language teaching yields two notable examples of

the kind of fossilization I have in mind. The terms “com-

municative” and “authentic” have been buzz words for

well over a decade now, and the clusters of issues to which

they refer have been the focus of much investigation and

discussion. Yet how many language classrooms have

been impoverished by an unreflecting assumption that

“communicative” language teaching is exclusively con-

cerned with the spoken language, or that “authentic” texts

are to be found only in newspapers and magazines? Both

terms, of course, have a wider meaning than is often

supposed. Because face-to-face oral communication is so

2 Le ar ne r au to no my: de fi nit io ns , is su es an d p robl em s

central to the human experience of language, it is inevi-

table and appropriate that it should occupy a correspond-

ing role in language teaching; but in these days of mass

media some of the most powerful messages that are

communicated within and between societies come to us

by means other than the face-to-face encounter. Similarly,

newspapers and magazines make up a significant propor-

tion of the reading matter consumed by developed socie-

ties - and the success of the Authentik newspapers in

French, German, Spanish and English testifies to the

usefulness of such materials in language learning; but that

should not blind us to the fact that recipes and novels,

telephone directories and public notices are also authentic

texts which language learners may wish or need to be able

to cope with.

Learner autonomy has been a central concern among

theorists of adult education for well over two decades.

More recently it has begun to attract attention in the school

sector, and all the signs suggest that “autonomy” is now

in the process of attaining the buzz-word status that

“communicative” and “authentic” have already enjoyed

for many years. It is the purpose of this book to explore

what we mean by “autonomy”, first by asking what

exactly lies behind this deceptively simple word, and then

by beginning to tease out how autonomy can be realized

in concrete learning situations. In its concern with defini-

tions and their origins the book is theoretical; in its con-

cern with the realities of learning, it seeks to be practical.

It is written in the belief that theory is useless if it does not

lead to practice, but equally that practice is random and

without direction if it cannot be systematically related to

a theoretical position.

The concept of learner autonomy has various sources

and wide-ranging implications; thus it cannot be satisfac-

torily defined in a few paragraphs. At the same time, it is

Preliminaries 3

necessary to set a framework for the discussion that

follows. I shall do this, first by saying what I think

autonomy is not, and then by offering a provisional

definition.

What autonomy is not

Like any other powerful idea, the concept of learner

autonomy arouses strong hostility in some quarters. But

more often than not such hostility seems to be based on

one or another false assumption about what autonomy is

and what it entails. Perhaps the most widespread miscon-

ception is that autonomy is synonymous with self-in-

struction; that it is essentially a matter of deciding to learn

without a teacher. Certainly, some learners who follow

the path of self-instruction achieve a high degree of auton-

omy, but many do not. For autonomy is not exclusively or

even primarily a matter of how learning is organized.

What might be termed the organizational fallacy emerges

again in the assumption that in the classroom context

learner autonomy somehow requires the teacher to relin-

quish all initiative and control. This assumption has two

principal sources. The first is a belief that autonomous

learners make the teacher redundant, which is closely

related to our first misconception. The second source is a

belief that any intervention on the part of the teacher may

destroy whatever autonomy the learners have managed

to attain.

Another misconception that arises in relation to class-

room learning is that autonomy is something teachers do

to their learners; in other words, that it is a new method-

ology. This is not entirely false, for learners are unlikely to

become autonomous without active encouragement from

their teachers. But it is certainly not the case that the devel-

opment of learner autonomy can be programmed in a

series of lesson plans.

A fourth misconception is that autonomy is a single,

4 Le ar ne r au to no my: de fi nit io ns , is su es an d p robl em s

easily described behaviour. It is true, of course, that we

recognize autonomous learners by their behaviour; but

that can take numerous different forms, depending on

their age, how far they have progressed with their learn-

ing, what they perceive their immediate learning needs to

be, and so on. Autonomy, in other words, can manifest

itself in very many different ways.

Fifthly, and closely related to our fourth misconcep-

tion, it is sometimes mistakenly believed that autonomy is

a steady state achieved by certain learners. This may well

emerge in a teacher’s boast that all her learners are autono-

mous, which seems to set them far apart from ordinary

learners. The fact is that autonomy is likely to be hard-won

and its permanence cannot be guaranteed; and the learner

who displays a high degree of autonomy in one area may

be non-autonomous in another.

A provisional definition of autonomy

If learner autonomy is not merely a matter of organiza-

tion, does not entail an abdication of initiative and control

on the part of the teacher, is not a teaching method, is not

to be equated with a single easily identified behaviour,

and is not a steady state attained by a happy band of

privileged learners, then what is it?

Essentially, autonomy is a capacity - for detachment,

critical reflection, decision-making, and independent ac-

tion. It presupposes, but also entails, that the learner will

develop a particular kind of psychological relation to the

process and content of his learning. 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.

In common usage the word “autonomy” denotes a

significant measure of independence from the control of

others. The concept of learner autonomy similarly implies

that the learner enjoys a high degree of freedom. But it is

Preliminaries 5

important to insist that the freedoms conferred by auton-

omy are never absolute, always conditional and con-

strained. Once this is accepted, many of the misconcep-

tions surrounding autonomy can be cleared away.

Because we are social beings our independence is

always balanced by dependence; our essential condition

is one of interdependence. Total detachment is a principal

determining feature not of autonomy but of autism: autis-

tic children suffer from “severe social impairment, de-

fined as the absence of the ability to engage in reciprocal

two-way interaction” (Frith 1989, p.57). The developmen-

tal learning that unimpaired small children undergo takes

place in interaction with parents, brothers and sisters,

grandparents, family friends, neighbours, and so on.

Education, whether institutionalized or not, is likewise an

interactive, social process. For most of us, important

learning experiences are likely to be remembered at least

partly in terms of our relationship either with one or more

other learners or with a teacher. What is more, our capac-

ity for self-instruction probably develops out of our expe-

rience of learning in interaction with others: in order to

teach ourselves, we must create an internal substitute for

the interaction of home or classroom.

The structure of this book

All the issues touched upon in this introductory chapter

are considered at greater length in the five chapters that

follow. Chapter 2 is concerned with learner autonomy as

a general educational goal. This raises central questions

about the psychology of learning and teaching, and they

are addressed in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 then considers

learner autonomy in terms of what we know about the

process of language acquisition. Chapter 5 looks at the

possibilities for autonomous learning in adult education

and at school. Finally, Chapter 6 addresses some of the

practical issues that must be confronted by any autono-

mous learning scheme.

Chapter 2

Autonomy as an educational goal

Autonomy in adult education

The foundation document for any discussion of auton-

omy in language learning is the report that Henri Holec

prepared for the Council of Europe in 1979 under the title

Autonomy in Foreign Language Learning (cited here as

Holec 1981). Holec’s report arose from a general move-

ment in adult education closely associated with the Coun-

cil of Europe’s interest in the concept of permanent edu-

cation. As Holec notes in his introduction, innovatory pro-

posals of many different kinds belong to this movement

by virtue of the attention they pay to

the need to develop the individual’s freedom by

developing those abilities which will enable him

to act more responsibly in running the affairs of

the society in which he lives. (Holec 1981, p.1)

Holec underlines the inescapably political tendency of

this agenda by quoting with approval Janne’s (1977) view,

expressed in another report commissioned by the Council

of Europe, that adult education

becomes an instrument for arousing an increasing

sense of awareness and liberation in man, and, in

some cases, an instrument for changing the envi-

ronment itself. From the idea of man “product of

his society”, one moves to the idea of man

“producer of his society”. (cit. Holec 1981, p.1)

Clearly, the autonomy that Holec wants to promote is not

confined to learning in a more or less formal educational

context, but carries over into every other area of life.

Indeed, it is explicitly pursued as a means of breaking

down the barriers that so often exist between learning and

living.

Holec defines autonomy as “the ability to take charge

of one’s learning” (1981, p.3), which means

[...] to have, and to hold, the responsibility for all

the decisions concerning all aspects of this learn-

ing, i.e.:

- determining the objectives;

- defining the contents and progressions;

- selecting methods and techniques to be used;

- monitoring the procedure of acquisition prop-

erly speaking (rhythm, time, place, etc.);

- evaluating what has been acquired. (ibid.)

Traditionally, of course, the teacher is in charge of learn-

ing, usually on behalf of some higher agency - school, edu-

cational authority, examining board, government depart-

ment; so that the curriculum is not only imposed on the

learner from outside, but has been drawn up without

specific regard to his individual experience, needs, inter-

ests, and aspirations. The transfer of responsibility for

learning from the teacher to the learner has far-reaching

implications, not simply for the way in which education

is organized but for power relationships that are central to

our social structure. For now the learner generates his own

purposes for learning; in pursuit of those purposes he de-

termines not only the content of learning but the way in

which learning will take place; and he is responsible for

deciding how successful learning is, both as process and

as goal-attainment. In other words, the curriculum now

comes from within the learner, as a product of his past

experience and present and future needs; learning is (to

borrow a central concept from Ivan Illich’s writings) de-

institutionalized. Holec does not, of course, imagine that

the capacity for autonomous learning is inborn. On the

contrary, at several points in his report he insists that it

Autonomy as an educational goal 7

8 L ea rn er au to no my : d ef i ni ti on s, is su es an d pr ob le ms

must be developed with expert help. Inevitably, the need

for such help becomes a central factor in redefining the

role of the teacher in adult education.

Autonomy and schooling

The benefits that should accrue from the development of

learner autonomy in adult education may be summarized

as follows:

- because the learner sets the agenda, learning should be

more focussed and more purposeful, and thus more

effective both immediately and in the longer term;

- because responsibility for the learning process lies

with the learner, the barriers between learning and

living that are often found in traditional teacher-led

educational structures should not arise;

- if there are no barriers between learning and living,

learners should have little difficulty in transferring

their capacity for autonomous behaviour to all other

areas of their lives, and this should make them more

useful members of society and more effective partici-

pants in the democratic process.

Now, formal education at all levels usually claims that

it promotes the kind of learning that will enhance the life

of the individual and thus enrich society. Inevitably, the

question arises whether the arguments for promoting

learner autonomy in adult education do not apply with

equal force to schooling. After all, it is hardly sensible to

leave the formation of responsible and participating citi-

zens to a part of the educational system that is not compul-

sory and thus touches only a minority of the population,

even in the best-endowed western European countries.

As we have seen, one of the chief reasons for promot-

ing learner autonomy in adult education is the desire to

remove the barriers between learning and living. Those

Autonomy as an educational goal 9

same barriers are a central concern of Ivan Illich’s book

Deschooling Society (1971, cited here as Illich 1979), one of

the most powerful attacks mounted in recent years against

traditional educational structures. Illich argues that school

institutionalizes values, and thus teaches students to confuse

process and substance:

The pupil [...] is “schooled” to confuse teaching

with learning, grade advancement with education,

a diploma with competence, and fluency with the

ability to say something new. (1979, p.9)

In Illich’s view school “removes things from everyday use

by labelling them education tools” (1979, p.83). This

means that even as it offers learners new information and

new experience, school erects a barrier between them and

the intended content and process of their learning. For

Illich schooling is based on the illusion that most learning

is the result of teaching. On the contrary, he insists:

Most learning happens casually, and even most

intentional learning is not the result of pro-

grammed instruction. Normal children learn their

first language casually, although faster if their

parents pay attention to them. Most people who

learn a second language well do so as a result of

odd circumstances and not of sequential teaching.

They go to live with their grandparents, they

travel, or they fall in love with a foreigner. Flu-

ency in reading is also more often than not a

result of such extra-curricular activities. Most

people who read widely, and with pleasure,

merely believe that they learned to do so in

school; when challenged, they easily discard this

illusion. (1979, p.20)

The examples of successful learning that Illich cites here

are also examples of autonomous learning. In each case

10 L ea rn er au to no my : d ef i ni ti on s, is su es an d pr ob le ms

learning is self-motivated, and undertaken in order to

fulfil a personal need. It is unlikely, however, that the

learners are particularly aware either that they are fulfill-

ing a need or that they are behaving autonomously. This

unconscious autonomy is one of the chief hallmarks of

effective learning that takes place independently of formal

educational contexts.

Whatever one may think of the practicality of the

solutions Illich proposes - and they require the disman-

tling of many structures central to traditional educational

systems -, it is difficult to deny that he makes out a pow-

erful case, and not only in relation to the deprived societies

of the third world. In our own privileged western Euro-

pean societies, to what extent do elements in the curricu-

lum impinge on the lives that pupils lead - in their heads

and in interaction with others - outside school? No doubt

functional literacy and numeracy have a direct applica-

tion to “real life”; and perhaps the more practically ori-

ented subjects like home economics and computer science

do too - indeed, this may be a reason for their comparative

popularity. But what about history and geography, phys-

ics and chemistry? And what, above all, about literature?

It is a fair bet that since the beginning of mass formal

education, literature for most people has not been some-

thing that they have appropriated to themselves, but has

been part of the institution of education.

There is, of course, nothing new in this diagnosis. The

many curricular and methodological reforms that have

been inspired by the concept of learner-centredness are

based on a similar analysis. And yet very large numbers of

learners - perhaps a majority - remain alienated from the

content and process of their learning. The problem is

likely to be particularly acute in subjects, including for-

eign languages, that are usually thought of as belonging to

the more “academic” side of the curriculum. This book

Autonomy as an educational goal 11

will argue that the solution lies in learner autonomy of the

kind Holec proposes for adult education, but attuned to

the different needs of children and adolescents. As I hope

to show, learner autonomy is the logical outcome of any

attempt to make curricula and classrooms genuinely learner-

centred.

From the politics to the psychology of autonomy

Both Holec and Illich present education as an inescapably

political process. Positively, it should be the means of

giving citizens the freedom to participate fully in the

society of which they are members; negatively, the barri-

ers that traditional educational structures can so easily

throw up between learning and living are potentially tools

of oppression and manipulation.

The fact is, however, that those barriers appear to be

erected in the first instance not by political but by psycho-

logical factors. They seem to arise, that is, from a mismatch

between traditional educational procedures and the ways

in which we naturally communicate with and learn from

one another. This phenomenon is very thoroughly ex-

plored by Douglas Barnes in his book From Communication

to Curriculum (1976). The distinction that Barnes draws

between “school knowledge” and “action knowledge” is

essentially the same as the one I have been making be-

tween “learning” and “living”:

School knowledge is the knowledge which some-

one else presents to us. We partly grasp it, enough

to answer the teacher’s questions, to do exercises,

or to answer examination questions, but it

remains someone else’s knowledge, not ours. If

we never use this knowledge we probably forget

it. In so far as we use knowledge for our own

purposes however we begin to incorporate it into

our view of the world, and to use parts of it to

12 L ea rn er au to no my : d ef i ni ti on s, is su es an d pr ob le ms

cope with the exigencies of living. Once the

knowledge becomes incorporated into that view of

the world on which our actions are based I would

say that it has become “action knowledge”.

(1976, p.81)

This raises the question, what is the relation between

teaching and learning? We have seen that in Illich’s view

most learning is not the result of programmed instruction;

and Barnes’s book reinforces the view that much of what

goes on in school fails to make an impact on many pupils.

For Barnes, as the above quotation suggests, the problem

is essentially one of communication. We can understand

new information only in terms of what we already know,

and much of the information presented via traditional

teaching has little in it that pupils can associate with them-

selves and their experience. Thus as a communicative

activity, formal teaching - what Bruner (1966) has called

“expository” teaching, the apparently straightforward

transmission of knowledge by teachers to learners - is

highly problematic.

Carl Rogers, the American psychologist and psycho-

therapist, certainly doubted the feasibility of teaching in

this traditional sense. For him, effective learning could

only arise from the learner’s uniquely individual experi-

ence; and the only worthwhile learning was learning that

changed the learner’s behaviour. Thus in a paper first

published in 1957 he declared:

It seems to me that anything that can be taught to

another is relatively inconsequential and has little

or no significant influence on behaviour.

(Kirschenbaum & Henderson 1990, p.302)

Admittedly he added this note: “That sounds so ridicu-

lous I can’t help but question it at the same time that I

present it”; but almost immediately the paper continues:

Autonomy as an educational goal 13

I have come to feel that the only learning which

significantly influences behavior is self-discov-

ered, self-appropriated learning (ibid.)

and:

Such self-discovered learning, truth that has been

personally appropriated and assimilated in expe-

rience, cannot be directly communicated to an-

other. (ibid.)

Essentially, Barnes and Rogers are saying the same

thing: learning is possible only to the extent that the

learner is able to integrate the new information that is

being offered with the sum of his experience to date. This

means that any attempt to solve the fundamental commu-

nicative problem identified by Barnes must take as its

starting point the learner’s perceived needs, his interests,

and his learning purpose.

In the popular imagination, education has to do with

the assimilation of a body of factual knowledge which is

assumed to be static. But of course, knowledge is chang-

ing all the time. It is safe to say that the orthodoxy

underlying the teaching of any school subject today is very

different from what it was thirty years ago. In another of

his papers, first published in 1967, Rogers identified the

development of the individual’s capacity to cope with

rapid changes in knowledge as the central goal for educa-

tion:

Changingness, a reliance on process rather than

upon static knowledge, is the only thing that

makes any sense as a goal for education in the

modern world.

(Kirschenbaum & Henderson 1990, p.304)

He concluded the same paper with this thought:

[...] if we are to have citizens who can live construc-

14 L ea rn er au to no my : d ef i ni ti on s, is su es an d pr ob le ms

tively in the kaleidoscopically changing world, we

can only have them if we are willing for them to

become self-starting, self-initiating learners.

(Kirschenbaum & Henderson 1990, p.321)

This brings us back to the issue of learner autonomy, but

seen less as a political benefit than as a psychological

necessity. If our psychological processes work in the way

that Barnes and Rogers claim (and Holec and Illich strongly

imply), then the case for promoting learner autonomy

begins to look unanswerable. For it appears that effective

and worthwhile learning may actually depend on the

extent to which learners achieve autonomy. This thought

is explored further in Chapter 3, which looks at funda-

mental issues in the psychology of learning and teaching.

Chapter 3

Autonomy and the psychology

of learning and teaching

Learning in child development

Holec’s desire to promote autonomy among adult learn-

ers; Illich’s conviction that most learners in formal educa-

tional contexts are alienated from the content and process

of their learning; Barnes’s distinction between “school

knowledge” and “action knowledge”; Rogers’s scepti-

cism about the effectiveness of traditional expository

teaching - all imply that learning is not a straightforwardly

cumulative process, not simply a matter of the learner

gradually adding more and more pieces to his stock of

knowledge in the way that a child may add blocks of Lego

to a developing shape. Rather, learning is to be seen as a

process where each increment must be accommodated to

what the learner already knows by various processes of

adjustment and revision. New knowledge, in other words,

necessitates the reorganization of existing knowledge.

This view is very much in line with current accounts of

child development, notably those decisively shaped by

the work of Jean Piaget and Jerome Bruner. There are im-

portant differences between Piaget and Bruner; for ex-

ample, interaction (and thus language) plays a more

central role in Bruner’s account of child development than

it does in Piaget’s. But they share the view that cognitive

development is driven by active problem-solving. Ac-

cording to this view, the child is autonomous in the sense

that the stimulus to develop comes from within itself and

the process of development is not subject to external con-

trol. Even in Bruner’s model, which allows social interac-

tion a much more central role than Piaget’s, the child

16 Le ar ne r au to no my: de fi nit io ns , is su es an d p robl em s

retains a high degree of independence as it participates in

the interdependent processes that provide the material

and the context for its problem-solving. It is not proposed,

of course, that the child is to a significant extent conscious

of the autonomy it enjoys, or that it deliberately manipu-

lates its independence in the interest of more efficient

growth; though we should note that a steady increase in

self-awareness is an integral part of normal development.

The question then arises, whether there is any qualita-

tive difference between the learning that characterizes

normal child development and other kinds of human

learning. Certainly, Bruner assumes an essential continu-

ity between developmental and school learning, and the

role he assigns to teaching in what he calls the “hypotheti-

cal mode” (which involves close co-operation between

teacher and learners; see Bruner 1966) is very similar to the

role played in child development by verbal interaction of

an informal kind. At the same time, all formal education

includes some subjects (mathematics and history are ex-

amples) that involve modes of thinking not normally

encountered outside an educational context. Successful

study of such subjects depends crucially on the learner’s

developing new capacities for abstract thinking - learning,

as it were, the syntax of the subject concerned. But in

Bruner’s view, such specialist capacities are developed by

giving children the opportunity to play the role of mathe-

matician, historian, and so on (see Bruner 1977); in other

words, by essentially the same processes as are involved

in developmental learning.

The psychology of personal constructs

If we are to justify the promotion of learner autonomy in

terms of the operation of normal psychological processes,

we need a general psychology that is continuous in its

essential features with the developmental psychology of

Piaget and Bruner. This is provided by the so-called

The psychology of learning and teaching 17

psychology of personal constructs, elaborated by the

American psychologist and psychotherapist George Kelly.

Kelly views man as a scientist equipped with a theory,

hypotheses, and an insatiable urge to ask questions (In-

quiring Man is the title of the standard introduction to

Kelly’s ideas; Bannister & Fransella 1989). By this Kelly

meant that each of us has a view of the world; according

to that view we have expectations of what will happen in

given circumstances; and our lives are a continuous pro-

cess of hypothesis-testing and theory-revision as we at-

tempt to make sense of the world around us. According to

this account, human development is never complete, for

it is part of our condition that we must constantly revise

our “constructs”, the meanings that we attach to events

and phenomena, in the light of new experience. The

following quotation provides a useful summary of Kelly’s

position:

The universe [...] is open to piecemeal interpreta-

tion. Different men construe it in different ways.

Since it owes no prior allegiance to any one

man’s construction system, it is always open to

reconstruction. Some of the alternative ways of

construing are better adapted to man’s purposes

than others. Thus, man comes to understand his

world through an infinite series of successive

approximations. [......]

Life is characterized [...] by the capacity of

the living thing to represent its environment. Es-

pecially is this true of man, who builds construc-

tion systems through which to view the real

world. (Kelly 1963, p.43)

According to Kelly, a person’s “constructions”, or “con-

structs”, constitute a system in the sense that they are

interrelated; and they are “dichotomous”, or “bipolar”, in

the sense that it is usually easier to think of them as having

18 Le ar ne r au to no my: de fi nit io ns , is su es an d p robl em s

two poles - black versus white, up versus down, nice versus

nasty, old versus new, and so on (Bannister & Fransella

1989, p.12). Constructs tend to interact with one another

hierarchically, as Bannister & Fransella explain (1989,

p.13):

For some people the construct traditional jazz

versus modern jazz may be subsumed as a subor-

dinate implication of the construct good jazz

versus bad jazz and both poles of the construct

might be subsumed under the “music” end of

the construct music versus noise. This hierarchical

quality of construct systems is what makes the

world a manageable place for us. The simple

trick of grouping hundreds of different ways of

making a living under the construct jobs (versus

hobbies or versus rest or versus vocations) means

that we can then easily handle a whole range of

such subordinate constructions. We can offer

them to one another, look at their higher, more

superordinate implications, add to the category

when necessary and so forth.

Where do our personal constructs come from? Clearly,

many of them are culturally bound; that is, they derive

from the mass of shared assumptions and values which

we acquire unconsciously from birth onwards and which

help to define the culture, or society, of which we are

members. But in their totality, as a system, they are unique

to each one of us, for they are constantly shaped and

reshaped by our attempts to make sense of the experience

that is ours and ours alone.

Personal constructs and learning

How personal construct psychology accounts for learning

should already be clear from the necessarily brief and

simplified account I have given of Kelly’s ideas. Each

The psychology of learning and teaching 19

learner brings his own system of personal constructs to

bear on the learning task. In a class comprising learners

from several different cultures, there may be very great

variation from one construct system to another; whereas

in a class whose learners share the same cultural back-

ground, the variation may be much less marked. But

whatever the composition of the class, individual experi-

ence will always ensure that no two learners have exactly

the same system of constructs.

According to personal construct psychology, any learn-

ing task requires the learner to assimilate new knowledge

to his current system of constructs. When the new knowl-

edge is additional information about a subject the learner

is already familiar with, learning may proceed without

any great difficulty. But when the new knowledge con-

flicts in some way with the learner’s existing system of

constructs - perhaps because it explicitly contradicts part

of the system, or entails a new way of thinking about

something - then learning can be not only difficult but

painful.

Although it is usually classified as a version of cogni-

tive psychology, personal construct psychology claims to

be all-embracing, accounting for the emotions as well as

cognition. For Kelly treats emotions like anxiety, hostility,

guilt, threat, fear and aggressiveness as aspects of con-

struct systems that are in process of change (Bannister &

Fransella 1989, p.21). The value of this feature of Kelly’s

psychology is twofold. First, it means that we do not need

to go outside the theory in order to explain difficulties in

or resistance to learning. Secondly, it amounts to a recog-

nition that learning is often difficult. Like Carl Rogers,

Kelly believed that learners and patients in psychotherapy

were engaged on essentially the same quest - for a new and

fuller understanding that would inevitably challenge their

present construct systems and might entail major adjust-

20 Le ar ne r au to no my: de fi nit io ns , is su es an d p robl em s

ments. Although it is easy enough to see what Kelly

meant, it is important to recognize that by no means all

learners - especially learners engaged in formal education

- will bring to bear on their learning the same intensity of

purpose that the psychotherapy patient may be expected

to bring to bear on his healing. For one thing, learners

often lack prior interest and personal commitment; for

another, genuinely profound learning is not a widespread

phenomenon. Although the aim must always be to en-

courage learners to commit themselves fully to their

learning, it is a great strength of Kelly’s psychology that it

highlights rather than conceals the difficulty of the enter-

prise.

I have argued that the developing child is autonomous

in the sense that its development is not subject to the

control of external forces. This autonomy is for the most

part unconscious. In Kelly’s approach to psychotherapy

and teaching, the basic technique is to make the patient or

learner aware of his system of personal constructs. For

such awareness enables him to identify areas of potential

difficulty or conflict in therapy or learning, and gradually

to assume conscious control of the process. In other

words, Kelly’s central purpose is to help the patient or

learner to develop a capacity for conscious autonomy.

Kelly devised what he called “repertory grid tech-

nique” as a method of uncovering patients’ personal

construct systems. This technique has been applied to

many different areas of activity (see Bannister & Fransella

1989); and Salmon (1988) has shown how a simplified

version can be used with classroom learners. Essentially,

repertory grid technique prompts an exploratory conver-

sation that permits the negotiation of mutual understand-

ing between therapist and patient, teacher and learners.

It is a fundamental claim of personal construct psy-

chology, then, that learning will be facilitated, emotion-

The psychology of learning and teaching 21

ally as well as cognitively, if learners can be brought to an

understanding of their personal construct systems. Again,

it is important to emphasize that there is no assumption

that this will always be easy to achieve or that successful

learning will inevitably follow. Indeed, it is a common ex-

perience that attempts to make learners conscious of the

demands of a learning task and the techniques with which

they might approach it, lead in the first instance to disori-

entation and a sense that learning has become less rather

than more purposeful and efficient. However, when the

process is successful, it brings rich rewards.

Thomas and Harri-Augstein (1990, pp.213f.) identify

three stages by which a learner moves from the uncon-

scious performance of a task to fully self-organized learn-

ing. The first stage is characterized by “dogged practice

and repetition”; some level of competence is achieved, but

the learner remains totally content- or task-bound. The

second stage is characterized by detachment from the task

and reflection on it; but the task remains the total focus of

attention. In the third stage the focus of attention shifts to

the process of learning itself, and this is what provides

“the crucial trigger to total self-organization in learning”.

Thomas and Harri-Augstein note that most learners find

it difficult to attain this third stage on their own. This

recalls Holec’s argument that learners are unlikely to de-

velop a capacity for autonomy without assistance, and

brings us again to the question of the teacher’s role.

Teachers have personal constructs too

Personal construct psychology provides us with a power-

ful argument for adopting a learner-centred approach to

curriculum and teaching. But if it is true that no two

individuals have exactly identical systems of personal

constructs, it follows that we must pay as much attention

to teachers’ as to learners’ individuality. Much of my ar-

gument so far tends, explicitly or by implication, towards

22 Le ar ne r au to no my: de fi nit io ns , is su es an d p robl em s

the conclusion that the teacher must find ways of accom-

modating her teaching to the personal constructs of her

learners. But whatever method she adopts to do this, she

cannot exclude her own system of personal constructs

from the process. Among other things, this means that

teachers owe it to themselves to be thoroughly familiar

with the assumptions, values and prejudices which deter-

mine their classroom behaviour.

Salmon (1988, pp.30 pass.) points out that attempts to

explain why some teachers are good and others bad have

tended to focus either on the skills required for effective

teaching or on the personality of the effective teacher. Both

kinds of explanation say little about the content of teach-

ing, which is assumed to be independent of teaching skills

on the one hand and the teacher’s personality on the other.

However, if we approach teaching from the perspectives

of personal construct psychology, content is centrally

important because it is inescapable. Classroom learning

involves an encounter between a number of personal

construct systems, all of them having some things in

common but each at the same time uniquely individual;

and there is a sense in which, whatever her subject, the

teacher cannot help but teach herself (Salmon 1988, p.37).

That is, the curriculum that she presents to her learners is

hers and no one else’s. However closely she may follow a

prescribed programme, she can only communicate her

unique interpretation of it. I shall return to the issue of the

teacher as the content of her teaching in Chapter 5, when

I discuss the scope for developing learner autonomy in

classrooms. For the moment it is enough to note the

implication that teacher autonomy is a precondition for

learner autonomy. In the next chapter we shall see how

this point is reinforced by the special demands made by

second and foreign language learning and teaching.

Chapter 4

Autonomy in language acquisition

and language use

First language development

There is more than one view of the relation between

general cognitive and linguistic development. For Piaget

cognitive development proceeds independently of lin-

guistic development, though as its necessary precondi-

tion; whereas for Bruner the two are more closely related,

interacting at certain stages. At the same time, Piaget and

Bruner share the view that the acquisition of syntax is a

matter of internalizing relations that the child has already

come to understand in the external world, which contrasts

with Chomsky’s insistence that grammatical structures

are innate. But whichever side we choose to take in this

argument it is clear that the acquisition of a first language,

or mother tongue, is an integral part of the development

of every normally endowed child. What is more, the

process has three defining features in common with the

process of cognitive development as understood by Piaget

and Bruner.

First, learning a mother tongue shares with other

developmental learning the characteristic that it is not

merely additive. Research has shown that children do not

learn their mother tongue word by word and structure by

structure. Rather, they pass through a series of well-

defined stages, starting with single-word utterances whose

interpretation is closely bound to the context in which they

are produced, and ending with strings of words that

deploy the fully-developed structures of the language in

question. As the child passes from one stage to the next, its

existing linguistic knowledge must be adjusted to accom-

24 Le ar ne r au to no my: de fi nit io ns , is su es an d p robl em s

modate new structural features.

Secondly, there is no separation between learning

language and using language. General cognitive develop-

ment proceeds, not only in order that children should be

able to solve the problems they encounter in interaction

with their environment, but as a result of their solving

them. In the same way, language acquisition proceeds,

not only in order that children should be able to commu-

nicate with their parents, but as a result of their commu-

nicating with them.

Thirdly, children progress from one stage of linguistic

development to the next when they are ready, and not

when they are told to do so by their parents or some other

external agency. In other words, language acquisition,

like general cognitive development, proceeds on the ini-

tiative of the child as it gradually learns to meet the

communicative needs generated by its interaction with

the environment. Thus, the largely unconscious auton-

omy that I have argued is an essential feature of general

cognitive development is also an essential feature of first

language acquisition.

This autonomy has two aspects. The first has to do

with the (unconscious) agenda by which linguistic devel-

opment proceeds; the second has to do with the social

freedom that the child enjoys to interact with parents, sib-

lings, relations, caregivers, and so on. Whatever attempts

may be made to impose control at a later stage, in the pre-

school years it is usually the child who decides when it will

talk and what it will talk about; though the range of

possibilities will be constrained by the environment in

which it finds itself.

Now, it seems to be the case that all normally endowed

children will develop the same basic internal grammar, or

unconscious knowledge of the structure of their mother

tongue, provided they receive “input” and have opportu-

Language acquisition and language use 25

nities to interact with other people. But differences in

social circumstances will obviously lead to differences in

the types of interaction available to the developing child;

and this in turn will lead to differences in communicative

repertoire from one child to another. In terms of the

argument in Chapter 3, different experiences will lead to

the formation of different sets of personal constructs.

These differences are likely to increase when children

move beyond the pre-literate stage. For one thing, the

development and exercise of literacy skills involves all our

cognitive faculties - in other words, fully engages our

whole system of personal constructs. For another, reading

and writing are not acquired autonomously as part of

natural development; they must be taught, or at least

learned by conscious effort. And consciousness of a learn-

ing task implies the possibility of the learner’s having an

attitude to it, which in turn admits the possibility of

widely differing degrees of success.

Second language acquisition

So-called “naturalistic” second language acquisition - that

is, the learning of a second language without benefit of

instruction - proceeds in essentially the same way as first

language development. Social interaction generates com-

municative needs and provides the learner with input;

and the learner’s effort to meet his communicative needs

by using the target language gradually produces learning.

What is more, although the detailed interpretation of the

research evidence is not beyond dispute, it seems fairly

clear that second language acquisition, like first language

development, is characterized by a succession of stages;

that the structures of a language are internalized in a more

or less fixed order, irrespective of such individual factors

as the learner’s mother tongue, social background, or age

(for an accessible discussion of the evidence, see Long

1987).

26 Le ar ne r au to no my: de fi nit io ns , is su es an d p robl em s

But whereas children acquiring the same mother tongue

define themselves as native speakers of the language in

question by developing the same internal grammar, “natu-

ralistic” second language acquisition has the greatest

possible variety of outcomes, ranging from near-native

competence at one end of the spectrum to the most

minimal communicative repertoire at the other. Of the

many reasons that can be advanced to explain this, per-

haps the most obvious are social and attitudinal; and they

are directly related to the issue of autonomy.

In Chapter 2 I quoted Illich’s argument that most

successful learning takes place independently of teaching

(see p.9 above). Among the examples he gives are people

who learn a foreign language by going to live with their

grandparents or by falling in love with a foreigner. In

either case the social situation of such learners is likely to

be highly favourable. Not only are they in a friendly and

supportive environment, among people who have a strong

personal interest in their learning success; they are also

confronted by a range of communicative possibilities no

less great than that of the child acquiring its mother

tongue. Their situation confers on them much the same

kind of social autonomy as is enjoyed by the child learning

its mother tongue, and this (we may hypothesize) allows

free rein to the acquisition process.

The case of the migrant worker is very different. At

home, with his family or in lodgings with other migrant

workers, he speaks his mother tongue, and this is the

medium through which he conducts his social life. At

work his colleagues are likely to be other migrant workers,

perhaps speaking the same language as himself. Thus he

needs to understand and speak the language of the host

community only in a limited number of situations, most of

them involving encounters with figures of authority. He

receives a narrow range of input from a narrow range of

Language acquisition and language use 27

communicative events. In all probability he will not pro-

gress beyond the minimal communicative repertoire that

he needs for survival. He may well form a negative image

of the host community, and this will further reduce the

likelihood of his learning its language. It is difficult to

imagine a situation further removed from that of the

teenager learning his grandparents’ language or the bride

learning her husband’s language. In the absence of any

kind of social autonomy, we cannot expect the migrant

worker to develop the psychological autonomy that char-

acterizes first language development and successful sec-

ond language acquisition.

Implications for language teaching

The principal goal of second and foreign language teach-

ing has always been to enable learners to use the language

in question as a medium of communication, defined in the

broadest sense. Communicative efficiency in the target

language community depends on learners having the

independence, self-reliance and self-confidence to fulfil

the variety of social, psychological and discourse roles in

which they are cast. It depends, that is to say, on their

achieving a substantial degree of autonomy as language

users. In order to maintain this autonomy, they must be

aware of the social requirements of the different situations

in which they are called upon to use the target language;

sensitive to the varying psychological relations they will

have to the different persons with whom they must

communicate; and capable equally of taking initiatives

and responding to the initiatives of others. This is a tall

order, even when the communicative repertoire aimed at

is carefully limited and precisely defined on the basis of an

analysis of the learners’ needs. It is an especially tall order

when, as happens in many formal educational contexts,

the learners have no prior interest in learning a foreign

language.

28 Le ar ne r au to no my: de fi nit io ns , is su es an d p robl em s

Some approaches to language teaching have concen-

trated the classroom effort on mastery of the structures of

the target language - by exposition and practice in the

grammar-translation tradition, by drilling structures in

the audio-lingual and audio-visual methods. Usually such

approaches have included opportunities for free expres-

sion in the target language, but they have tended to

assume that learners will convert their classroom knowl-

edge into communicative competence principally through

subsequent contact with the target language community.

There are two flaws in this assumption. First, in reality

most learners do not come into frequent or sustained

contact with the target language community; and sec-

ondly, analytical knowledge acquired in the classroom is

not necessarily continuous with the internalized knowl-

edge on which linguistic fluency rests.

As we have seen, research into first and “naturalistic”

second language acquisition has shown that the human

brain has a characteristic way of learning language, gradu-

ally analysing an internal grammar out of the input it

receives. It would be surprising if language teaching in

more or less formal educational contexts could circum-

vent these highly complex unconscious processes. In fact,

research into classroom language learning has uncovered

evidence of the same developmental orders as have been

observed in “naturalistic” learners. It seems that instruc-

tion may have a positive effect only when it either rein-

forces the features of the target language that the learners

are ready to internalize or is focussed on types of commu-

nication that allow learners to pay particular attention to

the form of their utterance (for a review of the evidence,

see Long 1987).

It is the virtue of genuinely communicative approaches

to language teaching that they attempt to take account of

these matters. Recognizing that “naturalistic” language

Language acquisition and language use 29

acquisition requires input, they make sure that learners

are presented with a rich and varied diet of authentic texts

in print and other media. Recognizing that “naturalistic”

language acquisition takes place as a result of communi-

cation, they emphasize the role of communication not

only as the goal but also as the channel of learning. Thus

the communication that goes on in the classroom assumes

central importance in the language learning process. This

means that as far as possible classroom communication

must be carried on in the target language; also that it must

be real to the learners in the sense that it engages them in

understanding and producing meanings that are impor-

tant to them.

If learners are to develop mastery of the range of

discourse roles that characterizes the autonomous lan-

guage user, those roles must be available to them in the

classroom. Consequently, there must be much more teach-

ing in the hypothetical than in the expository mode, to use

Bruner’s terms. For the expository mode typically con-

fines the learner to a narrow range of responding and

enquiring roles, as Sinclair and Coulthard’s (1975) analy-

sis shows. A description of two classrooms may help to

show just how far it is necessary to depart from traditional

patterns of classroom organization in order to enable

language learners to become autonomous language users.

In the first classroom, where the target language is

German, the teacher is testing the learners’ comprehen-

sion of an authentic text dealing with environmental

pollution, which they had to read for homework last

night. She gradually works her way round the class until

every learner has answered a question. After each answer

she provides evaluation, feedback and reinforcement,

often reformulating the answer in several different ways.

She also draws attention to certain formal features of the

target language, not only in response to learners’ mistakes

30 Le ar ne r au to no my: de fi nit io ns , is su es an d p robl em s

but also when something in the text reminds her of an area

of likely difficulty. German is spoken the whole time, and

for the most part the learners’ answers are not only

factually correct but also well-formed. Why, then, does

this classroom leave such a profoundly non-communica-

tive impression? And why, after the class, do several

learners express dissatisfaction with the process they have

just been through? For one thing, a whole-class activity in

which the teacher asks questions and individual pupils

are nominated to reply clearly fails to engage the sus-

tained attention of all the learners. The observer notices

that most learners show signs of wandering attention

from time to time, and some of their replies to the teacher’s

questions do not immediately attach themselves to the

thread of the lesson. For another thing, every utterance

that the learners produce is generated out of the text they

have in front of them, which acts as a prompt. If the text

were taken away, what exactly would remain? But per-

haps most important of all, the learners clearly do not feel

that they have any particular stake in what is going on. The

text they are working on was certainly not their choice,

and most of them seem to find difficulty in showing even

a polite interest in it. In terms of Thomas and Harri-

Augstein’s three stages of development towards fully self-

organized learning (see Chapter 3, p.21 above), these

learners are clearly at the first stage. They can perform an

externally imposed task with a fair measure of compe-

tence, but one senses that they would have considerable

difficulty in going beyond the task to a more flexible use

of the language that it contains.

In the second classroom, where the target language is

English, the learners are working in five groups, with

between three and five learners in each group. They are

nearing the end of a four-week period during which each

group has been engaged on a project of its own devising.

Language acquisition and language use 31

Two of the projects seem to run counter to communicative

orthodoxy, for they involve translation from the mother

tongue into the target language - one group is translating

a fairy tale into English with a view to subsequently

rewriting it as a short radio play; the other group, fasci-

nated by recent developments in Rumania, is compiling a

report in English by translating extracts from a collection

of Danish newspaper articles. The teacher moves from

group to group, discussing progress, suggesting how

some difficulty might be overcome, indicating where

information on a particular topic can be found, and pro-

viding explanations in response to direct questions about

the target language. Despite the apparently traditional

activities that some of the groups are involved in, this

second classroom makes an infinitely more communica-

tive impression than the first one. It is not simply that the

learners are speaking English to one another (something

that the teacher has insisted on from the beginning). The

essential point of difference is that they are communicat-

ing meanings that clearly matter to them. Because their

projects are entirely of their own devising, they are deeply

interested in what they are doing; even obviously weaker

pupils are fully involved. These learners are autonomous

in the sense that they have determined the content of their

learning, decided how they should go about the series of

tasks their project imposes on them, and accepted respon-

sibility collectively and individually for reviewing their

progress (compare this with Holec’s definition of the au-

tonomous learner, quoted in Chapter 2, p.7 above). Thus

they experience the learning they are engaged on as their

own, and this enables them to achieve to a remarkable

degree the autonomy that characterizes the fluent lan-

guage user. The fact that they make more or less steady

progress in their language learning allows us to suppose

that this autonomy helps to activate and nourishes their

32 Le ar ne r au to no my: de fi nit io ns , is su es an d p robl em s

unconscious acquisition processes.

Engaging learners’ personal constructs

In the first of our two classrooms it is the teacher who

determines the content of her pupils’ learning. No doubt

she would argue that the authentic text on which her class

is based is intrinsically interesting, so that her learners

ought to find it stimulating. But she evidently made no

effort to engage their prior interest in the theme of envi-

ronmental pollution - for example, by having a “brain-

storming” session in which the learners could all contrib-

ute to a preliminary lexical exploration of the topic. And

the discourse structure that she imposes on the class does

not allow individual learners to contribute anything of

their own. Because it restricts the learners to a peripheral

role in the discourse, the approach does nothing to engage

their personal construct systems.

In the second classroom, by contrast, everything is

done by techniques of negotiation that encourage learners

to explore and make explicit their personal constructs.

This is not to say that the teacher is not in control. On the

contrary, the learners are expected to follow a set of

disciplined procedures - they must determine in general

terms what they want to do; specify the end-product

(usually a written or tape-recorded text); determine what

materials they need in order to achieve their aims; and

make sure that each member of the group is given a role

which enables him or her to contribute fully to the project

in all its phases. Moreover, each learner is expected to keep

a diary in English which maintains a record of individual

and group progress and evaluates how well the individ-

ual learner and the group have worked. The teacher

begins each lesson with five minutes or so in which she

talks to the class as a whole (in English), reminding them

of their targets, encouraging groups to talk to one another

about their progress, and answering any general ques-

Language acquisition and language use 33

tions. It is an important feature of this approach that at the

end of each project-phase of four or five weeks the learners

must form new groups. This prevents the establishment of

cliques, ensures that in the course of a school year each

learner works at least once with all the other members of

the class, and insists on maintaining the class as a single

open society.

In much formal education language is taken for granted.

It may be necessary for learners to acquire new stylistic

habits appropriate to the “syntax” of the subjects they are

studying, but usually these are assumed to be an inevi-

table by-product of successful learning rather than one of

its central concerns. Certainly, the educational approaches

we were concerned with in Chapter 2 recognize the im-

portance of language for learning. Barnes, for example,

writes: “Through language we both receive a meaningful

world from others, and at the same time make meanings by

re-interpreting that world to our own ends” (1976, p.101).

But still, language is seen essentially as medium rather

than content. In the second or foreign language class, by

contrast, the target language has always been content but

all too rarely medium. It is central to the argument of this

chapter that successful language learning requires lan-

guage to be simultaneously medium and content.

We have seen how in the second of our two classrooms

learners’ personal constructs are engaged through ongo-

ing processes of negotiation. This has the effect of interest-

ing them in the language learning task. But successful

second or foreign language learning is a matter not only of

engaging learners’ personal constructs: to some extent

those constructs must also be extended and reshaped by

and in the target language. In “naturalistic” second lan-

guage acquisition this happens unconsciously as a result

of social interaction. In the classroom we certainly want to

exploit natural processes of acquisition by having learners

34 Le ar ne r au to no my: de fi nit io ns , is su es an d p robl em s

use the target language as the medium of their interaction

and learning. But the negotiation that plays a central role

in any attempt to promote learner autonomy requires that

we make explicit not only learners’ attitudes, assump-

tions, and goals, but some of the central features of the

target language. In other words, we need to supplement

behavioural with analytical learning, and we need to de-

velop techniques for bringing these two types of learning

together. I have already mentioned the possibility of a

“brain-storming” exploration of the vocabulary appro-

priate to a particular topic, which can prepare learners to

receive and respond to a text that will provide them with

new information: new words, new meaning relations

between words, and perhaps new structures. I conclude

this chapter with an account of a chain of activities that we

have used with learners of French, German and English at

many in-service days sponsored by Authentik. It seems to

us to suggest the beginnings of a pedagogy that helps to

develop learners’ autonomy as language acquirers by

basing the language learning task directly on an explora-

tion of their personal constructs.

To begin with, learners are given a jumble of perhaps

twenty-five or thirty words and phrases that have been

derived from an authentic text. Working in groups of

three or four, their first task is to sort the words and

phrases into four overlapping categories - TIME, PER-

SON, PLACE, EVENT. This requires them to think about

words as individual tokens, but it also encourages them to

begin to consider possible semantic and syntactic rela-

tions between words. The second task is to use the words

to construct a story outline. This continues the process of

drawing directly on learners’ personal constructs, but

since it is a group activity it also demands negotiation and

compromise between learners. When the story outline is

complete, the learners are given a simplified version of the

Language acquisition and language use 35

authentic text containing all the words they were given at

the beginning of the activity chain. Their next task is to use

this simplified text as a linguistic resource to expand their

story outline into a fully developed text. It is up to them to

decide whether or not their story should be adjusted to

coincide with the simplified text. When they have finished

producing their text, they are given the full authentic text

to compare it with.

It is our experience that this procedure enables learn-

ers to derive a great deal more meaning from the authentic

text, and thus potentially to learn a great deal more from

it, than they would if they simply tried to read it. For the

activities that have led up to the authentic text have

gradually helped them to develop their own target lan-

guage construct as a basis for receiving the authentic text.

(Many of the exercises in the Authentik newspapers and

cassettes are variations on this approach; further ex-

amples and a fuller discussion are to be found in Little et.

al. 1988 & 1989.)

Chapter 5

Autonomy in two kinds of

learning environment

The argument so far

I began Chapter 2 by showing that in adult education the

concept of learner autonomy is closely associated with the

desire to remove the barriers that often exist between

learning and the rest of living; the assumption being that

successful learners can carry their capacity for autono-

mous behaviour into every other area of their lives. I then

argued that the same concern to remove barriers between

learning and living provides a powerful argument for

promoting autonomous learning at school. And I con-

cluded the chapter by suggesting that the source of auton-

omy theory is psychological, having to do with how we

learn, and raised the question whether perhaps effective

learning takes place at all only to the extent that we

achieve, whether consciously or unconsciously, a suffi-

cient degree of autonomy.

In Chapter 3 I began by noting that for Piaget and

Bruner cognitive development proceeds on the basis of

the child’s problem-solving interaction with its environ-

ment, according to an agenda that is internal to the child

and not susceptible to external minipulation or control. In

this the child may be said to enjoy a large measure of

unconscious autonomy. I then argued that the psychology

of personal constructs provides us with a general psychol-

ogy of learning which is founded on essentially the same

view of human cognitive operations as the developmental

psychology of Piaget and Bruner. It argues that learning

will be possible to the extent that our personal constructs

enable us to understand and assimilate the new knowl-

edge in question; and that where the new knowledge is in

conflict with our constructs learning will be difficult,

perhaps even painful, and may be successfully resisted. I

concluded the chapter with the thought that not only

learners but teachers have personal constructs, and that as

a consequence each teacher’s interpretation of the curricu-

lum is necessarily unique; so that autonomy is an issue for

teachers as well as learners.

I began Chapter 4 by pointing out that first language

acquisition is similar in three respects to cognitive devel-

opment in general. First, it is not merely additive; the

absorption of new linguistic knowledge requires constant

reorganization of what is already known. Secondly, in

first language acquisition there is no separation between

language learning and language use; indeed, language

use is the indispensable channel of language learning.

Thirdly, the child acquiring its mother tongue is autono-

mous in the sense that it proceeds according to an internal

agenda that cannot be changed by external intervention. I

then noted that “naturalistic” second language acquisi-

tion proceeds via the same processes of social interaction

as first language development, and that it too is character-

ized by clearly defined stages. Moreover, research has re-

vealed that second language learners in the classroom

pass through the same developmental stages as “natural-

istic” second language learners. This was taken to imply

that language classrooms must provide learners with

plenty of input and ample opportunity for interaction

with and through the target language. In particular, learn-

ers must be allowed the social autonomy which is neces-

sary to successful “naturalistic” second language acquisi-

tion because it guarantees access to a wide variety of

discourse roles. I argued that such autonomy is likely to be

achieved by processes of negotiation that invite learners to

explore and make explicit their personal constructs. Fi-

Autonomy in two kinds of learning environment 37

38 L ea rn er au to no my : d ef i ni ti on s, is su es an d pr ob le ms

nally, I suggested that in order to help learners to achieve

psychological as well as social autonomy in their learning,

it is necessary to engage their personal constructs in the

linguistic as well as the social dimension of the learning

process.

The remainder of this book is concerned with practical

issues in the implementation of learner autonomy. In this

chapter I consider the possibilities for, but also the appar-

ent limitations on, the implementation of autonomy out-

side and inside the full-time educational system; while in

Chapter 6 I discuss some of the major issues and problems

that autonomous learning schemes have to confront.

Autonomous learning outside

the full-time educational system

In practical as well as psychological terms it is easy to see

why adult education should be learner-centred and should

seek to promote autonomous, self-organized learning.

For one thing, adults who undertake a course of learning

usually do so because they want to fulfil some personal or

professional need. Thus they should be able to specify

learning targets that are both precise and unique to them-

selves. Furthermore, because learning is only a small part

of their lives, only they can decide when and how they

should learn, and only they can decide when the learning

process has achieved its purpose. Also, many adults who

undertake language learning for professional purposes

have needs so distinctive that they cannot be met by

commercially available learning materials or general lan-

guage courses. For example, a German scientist who

already has quite fluent “general” English may need to

develop skills in argument and debate within his own

discipline so that he can participate in international semi-

nars where the working language is English; or a senior

member of the clerical staff of an English firm exporting to

Italy may need to develop a limited range of skills in

Autonomy in two kinds of learning environment 39

written communication to handle correspondence by let-

ter, fax and telex. In such cases the best learning materials

are likely to be authentic texts (in print, audio, or video)

that exemplify the repertoire the learner is aiming at,

together with a set of strategies for exploiting them.

Of course, we should not expect the adult learner to be

able to define and meet his learning targets without expert

assistance. He will almost certainly need help in specify-

ing what it is he should learn and translating that into a

coherent learning programme; in deciding how to make

best use of the limited time that he can devote to learning;

in finding appropriate materials to work with and devis-

ing strategies to exploit them effectively; and in learning

how to evaluate his progress. Ideally, our learner needs to

join a scheme that is explicitly devoted to the promotion of

autonomous language learning. Such a scheme is likely to

be founded on a combination of learning resources and

learner counselling, the aim of the latter being to help

learners achieve an ever-clearer understanding of why

they are learning, what they are learning, and how they

are learning (for a discussion of some of the fundamental

issues, see Riley (ed.) 1985 and Little (ed.) 1989; for a case

study, see Little & Grant 1986).

Schemes of this kind are not widespread, however,

and most adults who feel a need to learn a foreign lan-

guage find themselves enrolling for a language course

that is organized along much the same lines as school. It

is divided into terms; it is probably based on a course

book; there may be an examination or test to pass at the

end of the year; and the teacher’s relation to the class may

well be traditional in the extreme. Certainly the promotion

of learner autonomy is as desirable in these as in any other

circumstances, for the reasons I have advanced in earlier

chapters. However, the issues involved are essentially the

same as those that must be confronted by anyone wanting

40 L ea rn er au to no my : d ef i ni ti on s, is su es an d pr ob le ms

to promote autonomous learning at school.

Autonomous learning at school

Learners engaged in full-time education are different in a

number of important respects from the adult learners we

have just been considering. They are younger; the course

of their life has not yet been determined; their interests are

likely to be age-related and may thus be short-lived; they

are learning because they have to, and not necessarily be-

cause they want to; and their learning ends not when they

have achieved their learning targets but according to a

timetable usually prescribed by their date of birth.

For those inside the system it can easily seem that there

are so many constraints, so many factors over which

teachers and learners have no control, that learner auton-

omy is an impossible dream. They may be persuaded by

arguments of the kind I have been advancing, and they

may long to explore ways of making their classrooms

places where learning and living are one and the same

thing. But they are convinced that the system is so all-power-

ful and inflexible that autonomous learning cannot pos-

sibly happen for them. No doubt it does happen, in a

handful of specially favoured situations, but as a general

goal it is simply not practicable; the syllabus and the ex-

aminations just do not permit it. This counsel of despair is

founded, I believe, on three misconceptions.

The first misconception has to do with the power of the

syllabus, which is supposed to determine everything that

the teacher does in the classroom. This misses the point I

made towards the end of Chapter 3, that precisely because

teachers have personal constructs they cannot help but

have a unique understanding of the syllabus; so that their

teaching cannot be identical to anyone else’s. The syllabus

has not yet been written that prescribes exactly what the

teacher must do in every class from the beginning to the

end of her pupils’ learning. But even if such a document

Autonomy in two kinds of learning environment 41

were devised - effectively a script for every lesson - the

teacher’s individuality would still ensure that her per-

formance of the script was unlike anyone else’s. No doubt

teaching must always have an eye on the syllabus; but

even the most slavish disciple of the syllabus cannot avoid

taking a host of individual decisions and initiatives in

order to teach her classes. Why should those decisions and

initiatives not work in favour of learner autonomy?

The second misconception underlying our counsel of

despair is that the examinations are a barrier to the devel-

opment of learner autonomy because they predetermine

the content of learning. This was more likely to be true at

a time when foreign language syllabuses gave a central

role to prescribed (usually literary) texts; though even

then it was normally not the intention of the syllabus that

learners should read only the texts that were prescribed.

But nowadays prescribed texts play a much reduced role

in examination programmes, which by and large seek to

test skills rather than content. Certain skills inevitably con-

strain content; for example, a test of candidates’ ability to

understand public notices or public announcements must

be based on an appropriate range of possible instances.

But other skills - of reading and listening comprehension,

of general conversation, of letter-writing - are, relatively

speaking, content-free. And it must be so; for there is no

way of guaranteeing that all candidates will have been

exposed to exactly the same input, leading them to a

mastery of exactly the same words and structures (in

terms of the argument of Chapter 3, of course, no two

learners will ever learn exactly the same things). It has

often been said, but it is nonetheless true, that it is does not

help learners to be taught with only the examination in

mind; for this inevitably limits their learning and gives rise

to precisely the disjunction between learning and living

that autonomy should help us to avoid.

42 L ea rn er au to no my : d ef i ni ti on s, is su es an d pr ob le ms

The third misconception underlying our counsel of

despair has to do with the content of learning. Even

allowing that neither the syllabus nor the examination can

fully specify what is to be learned, many teachers remain

convinced that there is a certain amount of ground that

must be covered, certain things that must be taught.

Usually these “things” are elements of the target language

grammar - more often than not, features of morpho-

syntax; so that the concern about content is focussed not

on input but on the grammatical repertoire that learners

should derive from input. This concern originates in

traditional beliefs about the appropriate modes of teach-

ing, for it is clearly based on the conviction that it should

be possible to teach language, and especially grammar, by

expository means. But the fact is, no amount of teaching

has ever been able to guarantee learning, in second and

foreign languages or any other subject. And to insist on

believing that it can is to fly in the face of a growing body

of research evidence. As we saw in Chapter 4, second and

foreign languages are learned (or internalized) by the

same interactive processes as first languages. The explicit

treatment of features of the target language system can

probably support these processes, but it certainly cannot

replace them. The most successful learners are likely to be

those who are constantly interacting with and through the

target language, receiving and expressing meanings that

are important to them.

To the extent that it defines the content of learning in

explicit linguistic terms, a course book can easily stand in

the way of efficient language acquisition. At one time

course books systematically took learners through the

grammar of the target language, each unit dealing with a

different part of speech or a different structure; nowadays

they tend to focus on communicative functions. But in

either case, whatever the thematic content of each unit, its

Autonomy in two kinds of learning environment 43

underlying aim will be to teach a feature of the target

language. This means that the structure and rhythm of

lessons are likely to be determined, as Devitt (1989) has

shown, not by the way a particular theme unwinds, but by

the teacher’s sense of how the learners are coping with the

linguistic feature that provides the teaching point for the

unit.

There are various ways of trying to solve this problem.

One is to retain the course book but supplement it with

authentic materials, which is how most teachers use the

Authentik newspapers and cassettes. This has the advan-

tage of retaining the structure that the course book pro-

vides, but the disadvantage that it may turn out to be very

difficult to break the tyranny of the course book. A second

solution is to retain the course book, but make the learners

responsible for teaching one another. This approach to the

development of learner autonomy has been used with

great success by Jean-Pol Martin of the University of

Eichstätt in Bavaria. A third solution is to replace the

course book with materials that teach parts of other

curriculum subjects through the target language; this

approach is advocated by Devitt (1989). A fourth solution

is to replace the course book with authentic materials pro-

vided by the teacher and/or the learners - a minority of

teachers now use Authentik as their principal teaching/

learning resource. These last two solutions have the ad-

vantage that the content of learning, in the sense of input,

remains unstructured. However, unstructured input

materials need to be supplemented with explicit informa-

tion about the target language, at least in the form of a

grammar and a dictionary, in order that behavioural may

be supplemented by analytical learning. In each case, of

course, the development of learner autonomy depends

not on the content materials per se, but on the relation that

the learners establish to them.

Chapter 6

Issues and problems in the

implementation of autonomy

The teacher

By now it should be clear that, so far from requiring him

to relinquish control in the classroom, the development of

learner autonomy will depend crucially on the initiatives

the teacher takes - learners will not develop their capacity

for autonomous behaviour simply because he tells them

to. The question is, what kinds of initiative should the

teacher take, and in what ways are they likely to differ

from the initiatives he is used to taking?

I argued in Chapter 3 and again in Chapter 5 that every

teacher necessarily has his own unique interpretation of

the syllabus he is responsible for teaching. Perhaps the

first step he should take towards developing autonomy in

his learners is to negotiate a joint interpretation of the

syllabus with them. This will entail a thorough explora-

tion of the aims of the syllabus, whether implied or

explicit, and of the ways in which the learners can make

those aims their own. Such a process is more likely to

succeed if it begins by inviting the learners to make explicit

what they expect from the learning process and what they

can bring to it, than if it begins with a lecture on the

benefits of autonomous learning.

This may sound straightforward enough, but it cannot

be achieved without changing the role of the teacher in a

way that in turn changes the power structure of the

classroom. Teachers who were themselves taught in the

expository mode and whose training was in the same

tradition, are likely to find it difficult to make the transi-

tion from purveyor of information to counsellor and

manager of learning resources. For one thing, the exposi-

tory mode requires the teacher to talk for a large part of

each lesson, and this encourages him to believe that when

he is not talking he is not teaching. How can the learners

possible be learning when they, and not the teacher, are

talking?

Another difficulty with the expository mode of teach-

ing is that the teacher not only sets the problems but

usually solves them too. In other words, teaching by

example plays a much more central role than learning by

doing. Even teachers who encourage their pupils to learn

by discovering for themselves often find it difficult not to

intervene when they see learners, individually or in a

group, grappling with a problem and moving only slowly

towards a solution. But it is precisely the grappling - the

grinding together of conflicting constructs - that leads to

learning, and much learner effort will be wasted if the

teacher intervenes too quickly.

Teachers’ eagerness to intervene is also prompted by

their worry that there is so much ground to cover. As I

noted in Chapter 5, this worry usually focuses on the

grammar of the target language. We may accept the impli-

cation of research findings that the explicit teaching of

grammar has at best a somewhat subordinate role to play

in language teaching; but when the exam is looming and

more than a few members of the class still can’t seem to get

their endings right, it can be very comforting for the

teacher to run through the rules again.

For a teacher to commit himself to learner autonomy

requires a lot of nerve, not least because it requires him to

abandon any lingering notion that he can somehow guar-

antee the success of his learners by his own effort. Instead,

he must dare to trust the learners. The expository teacher

carries the whole burden of learning on his own shoul-

ders: one of the chief reasons for trying to develop learner

The implementation of autonomy 45

46 Le ar ne r au to no my: de fi nit io ns , is su es an d p robl em s

autonomy is to get the learners to share that burden.

The learner

At what stage are learners ready for autonomy? Teachers

who ask this question usually expect an answer that

proposes a minimum degree of maturity learners should

achieve before they are encouraged to start accepting

responsibility for their own learning. However, the an-

swer to the question is, as soon as possible. Most of the

techniques likely to be adopted in any scheme designed to

promote autonomous learning at the second and third

levels of education have been in common use at primary

level for many years. That they have often been outstand-

ingly successful is hardly surprising, for the primary

child’s personal constructs are still in the early stages of

formation; she is only just beginning her acquaintance

with institutionalized learning. Moreover, in their appli-

cation at primary level these techniques deliberately seek

to imitate the modes of learning that have shaped the

child’s development to date: problem-solving in a context

of social interaction.

By the beginning of second-level education - which is

when most language learning begins in formal educa-

tional contexts - learners have considerable experience of

institutionalized learning, and they may be strongly resis-

tant to the idea of autonomy. As Salmon (1988, p.61)

points out,

The progression of education is, broadly, a pro-

gression away from person-centred learning

towards learning that is knowledge-centred. The

hierarchy of school subjects reserves the highest

status for forms of knowledge that are essen-

tially depersonalized.

In other words, popular educational wisdom concedes

that early learning needs to take account of the individu-

The implementation of autonomy 47

ality of the learner - what he already knows, the system of

values he brings with him to the learning task -, but

assumes that the further we progress up the academic

ladder the less these personal factors count.

For many learners at second and third levels the most

important thing is not that they should learn, but that they

should get good qualifications (cp. the first quotation

from Illich on p.9 above). By the time learners are nearing

the end of second-level education it may be difficult to

shake their belief that the teacher’s job is straightfor-

wardly to prepare them to do well in the exams. This can

be a problem especially with more able pupils, who may

feel comfortable in a state of more or less total dependence

on the teacher provided their efforts are duly rewarded.

By the time they reach third-level education, some

learners have formed such a rigid view of what learning

entails that they find it very difficult to become autono-

mous. Little and Grant (1986) describe one such case in

their report on a pilot scheme designed to develop autono-

mous learning of German among undergraduate students

of Engineering Science. The student in question believed

himself to be a good language learner, despite the fact that

languages had not been among his stronger subjects at

school. His principal learning strategy was to try to learn

chunks of the course materials by heart. Not surprisingly,

this produced in him a feeling of acute boredom. Looming

large in his thoughts was the image of one of his past

teachers, for ever offering negative evaluations of his ef-

forts. This learner frequently became discouraged by his

lack of progress and several times was on the verge of

leaving the scheme. Frequent counselling enabled him,

precariously, to complete the two-year learning programme.

By contrast, the most successful learner participating in

the scheme was clear from the beginning where he wanted

his learning to take him. He already knew quite a lot of

48 Le ar ne r au to no my: de fi nit io ns , is su es an d p robl em s

German, but he had learned it “naturalistically” (autono-

mously) by going to Germany to work during his summer

vacations. His reason for joining the scheme was that he

wanted to continue by other means what he had already

started on his own initiative; in particular he wanted to

give a vocational perspective to his learning. He subse-

quently found employment in a German laboratory.

We should not, of course, be surprised if some learn-

ers are resistant to the idea of autonomy. After all, auton-

omy implies a readiness to subject our certainties to

continuous challenge, and that can be very unsettling. As

a rule of thumb, the older learners are when they first meet

the idea of autonomy, the harder the teacher will have to

work to persuade them that it makes sense. Again, begin-

ning with activities that demonstrate the personal basis of

learning is likely to be more successful than a lecture

explaining why learners need to be autonomous.

The process of learning

The autonomous language classroom or learning scheme

will seek to create the conditions in which learning pro-

ceeds by negotiation, interaction, and problem-solving,

rather than by telling and showing. These processes will

focus the teacher’s and learners’ attention sooner rather

than later on the content of learning and the organization

of classroom activities.

In Holec’s definition of learner autonomy, the learner

accepts responsibility for the content of his learning. In

some cases this may mean that the learner actually finds

his own learning materials; though as we noted in Chapter

5, even self-motivating adult learners are likely to need

assistance in finding materials, either because they do not

know exactly what will correspond to their needs, or else

because they do not know where to look for what they

want. In any case, it is possible for the learner to accept

responsibility for the content of his learning without

The implementation of autonomy 49

necessarily choosing it himself. In Chapter 5 I referred to

the experiment in which Jean-Pol Martin divided a French

class into groups and the groups took turns to teach the

rest of the class. In that instance, the language course book

was chosen by the teacher, but the pupils accepted respon-

sibility for the choice by agreeing to use it as the basis for

their learning. And of course the group of learners respon-

sible for teaching a particular unit to the rest of the class

could not help but make it their own in the way they

prepared and communicated it.

In most schemes designed to develop autonomous

learning there is likely to be a compromise between

learner-selected and teacher-selected materials, arising

from the need to take account of the learners and their

personal constructs on the one hand and the teacher’s

special expertise on the other. Where the selection of

textbooks of any kind is concerned, the teacher has a

responsibility that cannot be handed over to the learners

because they do not have enough knowledge and experi-

ence to accept it. On the other hand, only learners can

know what materials - from whatever source - are genu-

inely relevant to them. Thus it is essential that the content

of learning should be subject to negotiation and continu-

ous review. If it is not, learner responsibility is likely to be

a rhetorical convention rather than a reality.

In Chapter 4 I argued that what we know about “natu-

ralistic” second language acquisition encourages the view

that learners in formal contexts need to be given access to

as wide a range of discourse roles as possible: examples of

how native speakers cope with different roles, together

with opportunities to play the roles for themselves within

the limits imposed by their competence in the target

language. Thus it is a matter of the greatest importance

how learning activities are organized. To some extent this

will be determined by the choice of input materials. For

50 Le ar ne r au to no my: de fi nit io ns , is su es an d p robl em s

example, the decision to use a course book but have the

learners teach one another means that learners-as-teach-

ers will inevitably be required to assume directive and

expository roles; while learners-as-learners will assume

responding roles and, depending on the nature of the

course book, may also be assigned a variety of discourse

roles in simulations of various kinds. At the other extreme,

when it is decided that the learners should determine the

content of learning by formulating group projects (as in

the second classroom I described in Chapter 4, pp.30ff.

above), the discourse roles that learners experience are not

predetermined but depend on the ebb and flow of their

interaction. This has the advantage of allowing discourse

roles to be determined by the social dynamics of the

group, but the disadvantage that learners may be trapped

in the range of roles permitted them by the position they

occupy in the social hierarchy of the class.

Learning resources and learning aids in the widest

sense of the word - books, audio and video cassettes,

computers - must be considered in terms of both the

content of learning and classroom organization. Certainly

learners need access to information about the target lan-

guage. Specifically, they need dictionaries that will give

them the words they want and grammars that will tell

them how those words behave; dictionaries and gram-

mars, moreover, that are easy for them to use. How audio

and video materials are used will depend partly on how

the content of learning is organized generally and partly

on what facilities are available. In a class that is using one

of the Authentik newspapers as a resource for project

work, the facility of being able to view television news

broadcast by satellite may provide a useful additional

source of input. Similarly, a language laboratory that is or-

ganized partly as a self-access resource can support au-

tonomous learning by making a host of supplementary

The implementation of autonomy 51

materials available to the learners. It should be stressed,

however, that an autonomous learning scheme does not

depend above all else on providing a great wealth of

materials. It is true that learners need much more input

than they have customarily received, but it should be

remembered that a single issue of one of the Authentik

newspapers contains more input than many course books.

As Higgins (1988) has pointed out, computers can be

used to support language learning in two different modes,

which he labels “magister” and “pedagogue”. In the

“magister” mode the computer stands in for the exposi-

tory teacher, giving the learner information, asking ques-

tions and providing the correct answer, sometimes with a

certain amount of feedback on the learner’s errors. In the

“pedagogue” mode, on the other hand, the computer

offers the learner various kinds of resource that he can

draw upon as his needs develop. Both modes may have

their place in an autonomous learning environment -

“magisterial” programmes may be useful, for example,

for learners who want to test their explicit knowledge of

a particular grammatical feature. But on the whole the

“pedagogue” mode is more likely to play a central role.

Programs exist that enable learners to build up their own

database, and this may be a useful way of getting a whole

class to keep track of the vocabulary they learn. But per-

haps the most beneficial use of the computer will be for

word-processing. The possibility of being able to revise

and correct ad infinitum encourages learners to experi-

ment; the possibility of getting a “clean” print-out at any

stage in the development of a written text is a powerful

motivating factor.

Learner training

All “naturalistic” learning takes place in order to satisfy

some need of the learner, and proceeds according to his

own internal agenda. This applies equally to so-called de-

52 Le ar ne r au to no my: de fi nit io ns , is su es an d p robl em s

velopmental learning and learning that just seems to

happen at later stages in life. Such learning, as I have

argued at different points in this book, is autonomous; yet

the learner is probably not aware of his autonomy and is

unlikely to reflect much on the progress of his learning.

Within formal educational contexts, on the other hand, it

is fundamental to autonomous learning that the learner

should develop a capacity to reflect critically on the

learning process, evaluate his progress, and if necessary

make adjustments to his learning strategies. For when we

take a conscious decision to embark on a course of learn-

ing, we can only claim to be autonomous learners if we are

able to exercise some degree of conscious control over the

process. Learning how to learn is thus a central compo-

nent of all autonomous learning schemes.

Many schemes require learners to keep a diary or

journal in which they record what they have done, how

well they think they have done it, and what they think they

have learned. This serves the necessary purpose of giving

retrospective shape to the learning process, making it

tangible, something that can be recalled and talked about.

However, teachers who have used diaries of this kind

usually find that learners’ judgements of their learning

remain at a very general level, recording how hard they

think they worked or how much they enjoyed a particular

activity. This is hardly surprising, for without expert

guidance few learners will be able to identify a specific

learning strategy, let alone evaluate its effectiveness. Yet it

is clear that to be able to do so belongs to a capacity for

critical reflection on the learning process. Because it is not

something that comes naturally, it requires a lot of effort

and what (rather against the spirit of autonomous learn-

ing schemes) has come to be called “learner training”.

Learning in formal educational contexts is a matter of

conscious decision and conscious effort; at the same time,

The implementation of autonomy 53

successful second language learning depends at least as

much on the activation of largely unconscious acquisition

processes as it does on deliberate effort. It is thus useful to

distinguish between two different kinds of learning strat-

egy, the behavioural and the analytical. Behavioural strate-

gies are kinds of linguistic or communicative behaviour

likely to promote unconscious learning as the target lan-

guage is used, whereas analytic strategies are techniques

for organizing and remembering things one is conscious

of wanting to learn.

Behavioural strategies tend to resolve themselves into

a single rule of thumb: never miss an opportunity to use

(listen to, speak, read, and write) the language you are

learning. In autonomous learning schemes that give learn-

ers access to a wide range of discourse roles, this may seem

superfluous advice. But not every learner will necessarily

accept all the discourse roles offered to him. Some roles

may seem to run counter to his personality, while others

may lie outside his experience to date. Helping a learner

to accept such roles requires a great deal of tact; but it is a

task that must not be shirked, for the growth of the

individual’s communicative capacity should be a feature

not just of autonomous learning schemes but of education

generally. As a matter of principle, learners should be en-

couraged to observe themselves as they use the target

language, noting the circumstances in which they succeed

and those in which they have difficulties, and exploring

why the difficulties arise.

Analytical strategies are focussed on items of the

target language that learners particularly want to remem-

ber - mostly words and phrases - and the rules that govern

how those items behave. It is worth stressing again that

learning rules is not likely to improve fluency in the target

language, though it may well improve accuracy in situ-

ations where there is time to plan and/or revise. Again as

54 Le ar ne r au to no my: de fi nit io ns , is su es an d p robl em s

a matter of principle, the better organized an analytical

strategy is, the more successful it will tend to be. It is a

good idea for learners to keep a vocabulary notebook in

which they write down words they particularly want to

remember. But it is not likely to help them much if they

write words down in random or alphabetical order. Rather,

they should be encouraged to organize the vocabulary

they want to remember in semantic fields or thematic

clusters, perhaps using different colours to distinguish

between different word classes and arrows to indicate

relations between words.

No two native speakers of a language have exactly the

same vocabulary (any more than they have exactly the

same personal constructs; the two facts are closely re-

lated). Thus in second and foreign languages too there will

inevitably be individual variation. In autonomous learn-

ing schemes this should be seen as a positive rather than

a negative factor. Learners should be encouraged regu-

larly to explore the development of their target language

vocabulary, asking themselves why they find it easy to

remember some words whereas others never seem to be

available when they need them. Since it is meant to be an

aid to learning, the vocabulary notebook should reflect the

fact that vocabulary acquisition is a dynamic process.

There is clearly sense in not writing down something we

already know; there might equally be sense in going

through the vocabulary notebook at regular intervals and

crossing out words that no longer require a conscious

effort of recall.

Learning grammatical rules is usually thought of as

something quite separate from vocabulary learning; though

in fact when we remember a word, part of what we

remember usually has to do with how it behaves in

relation to other words. For this reason it is probably wise

not to encourage a hard-and-fast division between vo-

The implementation of autonomy 55

cabulary and grammar learning. Again, learners should

be encouraged to commit grammatical rules to memory

not because they are there, but because they are relevant

to their particular communicative needs. Learning gram-

mar should be based on exploration of language in use.

For example, when they have completed a piece of written

work, it can be useful for learners to consider the errors

they have made and ask themselves why they made them.

Getting learners to correct and edit one another’s work can

also be highly beneficial: another person's mistakes al-

ways seem to be easier to detect than one's own.

In vocabulary and grammar learning, learners should

be encouraged always to make use of all the knowledge at

their disposal, including knowledge of other languages,

especially their mother tongue. Comparing patterns of

regularity in the target language with patterns of regular-

ity in the mother tongue can be one of the most effective

routes to understanding. Moreover, learners should be

encouraged to explore the usefulness of these analytic

learning strategies as aids to communication. For ex-

ample, if their work on vocabulary has taught them to note

where cognates occur between the target language and

their mother tongue, or to deduce the rules of word-

formation in the target language, they are likely to be able

to draw on that knowledge in certain communicative

situations.

Finally, learners may need help in deciding how best

to go about their learning - for example, when to learn

something by heart, and when simply to write it down in

an organized way and regularly review it. Sometimes they

may seek advice on how best to proceed, but often they

will approach a learning task assuming that they know

how it should be tackled. In the latter case, are they

expressing a learning preference that somehow reflects

their cognitive constitution, or are they acting out the

56 Le ar ne r au to no my: de fi nit io ns , is su es an d p robl em s

cultural conditioning they have received? This is a com-

plex issue, and one that cannot be dealt with adequately

here. However, since the processes that drive develop-

mental learning and first language acquisition seem to be

universal, it seems reasonable to assume that differences

of experience (cultural differences in the widest possible

sense of the term) account for very many of the individual

differences between learners. Thus there is nothing sacro-

sanct about a particular learning style, and if it is ineffi-

cient, the learner should be encouraged to recognize the

fact and explore alternative possibilities. This applies with

no less force to learners from societies with very different

traditions from our own. Certainly, it is important to

respect ethnic and cultural differences and to recognize

how easily we can give offence by seeming to dismiss

lightly some highly valued feature of another way of life.

At the same time, we must remember that all instructional

methodologies are so many attempts to model internal

psychological processes. As such they are cultural con-

structs, and like all other cultural constructs, they are

constantly open to exploration, challenge and change.

Conclusion

“Exploration, challenge and change” sums up much of

what this book has been about and is as good a note as any

on which to end. In the compass of these sixty or so pages,

I have tried to show why it makes sense to promote learner

autonomy, from the perspectives of learning in general

and language learning in particular; and I have tried to

identify the principal practical issues involved in imple-

menting learner autonomy and some of the problems

likely to be encountered on the way. I do not believe that

learner autonomy offers infallible solutions to every prob-

lem encountered in classroom learning; nor do I believe

that it guarantees success in every case. But I do believe

that it makes sense, not only as the logical outcome of

The implementation of autonomy 57

learner-centredness in education generally, but also as the

approach to language learning that can best do justice to

communicative ideals and the insights we are beginning

to gain from empirical research into language acquisition.

Obviously, a book of this length can only seek to state

principles, raise issues and offer general guidelines. But if

in doing that it causes its readers - at any level of education

- to reflect seriously on learner autonomy, it will have

succeeded in its aim.

Suggestions for further reading

Two books by Jerome Bruner provide an eminently read-

able introduction to his thinking on education: The Process

of Education ( Ca mb r id ge , Ma ss . : H ar va r d U ni v er si t y P re s s;

second edition 1977) and Toward a Theory of Instruction

(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; 1966). M.

Boden’s Piaget (Glasgow: Fontana; 1979) provides a wide-

ranging introduction to the work of the Swiss polymath,

while D. Wood’s How Children Think and Learn (Oxford:

Blackwell; 1988) includes an up-to-date survey of compet-

ing models of cognitive development.

Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society (Harmondsworth:

Penguin; frequently reprinted) is consistently thought-

provoking on issues central to the arguments of this book.

H. Kirschenbaum & V. L. Henderson’s collection The Carl

Rogers Reader (London: Constable; 1990) includes several

of Rogers’s essays on teaching and learning.

The essence of George Kelly’s psychology of personal

constructs is contained in his A Theory of Personality (New

York: Norton; 1963), a reprint of the first three chapters of

his earlier two-volume work, The Psychology of Personal

Constructs (New York: Norton; 1955). The standard intro-

duction to personal construct psychology is Inquiring

Man. The Psychology of Personal Constructs, by D. Bannister

& F. Fransella (London: Routledge; third edition, re-

printed 1989). Phillida Salmon’s constantly stimulating

Psychology for Teachers (London: Hutchinson; 1988) looks

at central issues in teaching and learning from the per-

spective of personal construct psychology.

A. Elliot’s Child Language (Ca mbri dge U nive rity Pres s;

1981) is a good introduction to first language acquisition,

while Language Development, edited by A. Lock and E.

Fisher (London: Croom Helm; 1984), offers an accessible

overview of research findings. W. Littlewood’s Foreign

and Second Language Learning ( C a m b r i d g e U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s ;

1984) is an excellent brief introduction to second language

acquisition.

Four books that grew out of a concern for the role of

English in the British school curriculum contain a rich har-

vest of insights and practical ideas relevant to the promo-

tion of learner autonomy in the foreign language classroom:

Language and Learning by James Britton (Harmondsworth:

Penguin; 1972); From Communication to Curriculum by

Douglas Barnes (Harmondsworth: Penguin; 1976); Lan-

guage, the Learner and the School by Douglas Barnes, James

Britton and Mike Torbe (Harmondsworth: Penguin; third

edition 1986); and Finding a Language. Autonomy and Learn-

ing in School by Peter Medway (London: Writers & Read-

ers, in association with Chameleon; 1980).

Henri Holec’s Autonomy in Foreign Language Learning

(Oxford: Pergamon; 1981) retains its status as a founda-

tion document in any discussion of autonomy in foreign

language learning. The compendium of articles Holec

edited for the Council of Europe, Autonomy and Self-

Directed Learning: Present Fields of Application (Strasbourg:

Council of Europe; 1988), reports on experiments in a

number of different countries and educational settings.

Discourse and Learning, a collection of papers produced by

members of the Centre de Recherches et d’Applications

Pédagogiques en Langues, Université de Nancy II, and

edited by Philip Riley (London: Longman; 1985) has much

to say about autonomy in language learning. Self-Access

Systems for Language Learning, edited by David Little

(Dublin: Authentik, in association with CILT; 1989), con-

tains practical suggestions that are relevant to classroom

as well as self-instructional learners. The papers collected

in Learning Styles, edited by R. Duda and P. Riley (Presses

Universitaires de Nancy; 1990), approach the question of

learning styles from many different points of view and

Suggestions for further reading 59

60 Le ar ne r au to no my: de fi nit io ns , is su es an d p robl em s

consider evidence drawn from a wide variety of learning

environments.

Learner Strategies and Language Learning, edited by A.

Wenden and J. Rubin (Prentice Hall International; 1987),

reflects the recent growth of research into how learners go

about the business of mastering a foreign language. Learn-

ing to Learn English: a Course in Learner Training, by. G. Ellis

and B. Sinclair (Cambridge University Press; 1989), and

Language Learning Strategies, by Rebecca L. Oxford (New

York: Newbury House; 1990) offer a wealth of practical

advice on how to help learners towards more efficient

learning.

Communication in the Modern Languages Classroom, by

Joe Sheils (Strasbourg: Council of Europe; 1988), is an

indispensable compendium of pedagogical techniques

designed to promote communicative language learning

and thus of central relevance to learner autonomy.

Learner autonomy is also an underlying concern of

Authentic Texts in Foreign Language Teaching (Dublin: Au-

thentik; 1988) and a revised version of the same book,

Learning Foreign Languages from Authentic Texts (Dublin:

Authentik, in association with CILT; 1989), by David

Little, Seán Devitt and David Singleton. Both books pro-

vide a theoretical discussion and many practical examples

of the use of authentic texts in the foreign language

classroom.

John Higgins’s Language, Learners and Computers

(Harlow: Longman; 1988) considers possible roles for

computers in language learning in terms that are easily ac-

commodated to discussion of learner autonomy. CALL,

by David Hardisty and Scott Windeatt (Oxford University

Press; 1989) is a useful guide to communicative language

learning activities based on a variety of computer pro-

grams.

Promoting language learner autonomy through portfolio-based instruction: A classroom experiment

Article

Mar 2022

The present study employs a quasi-experimental design to investigate the effectiveness of portfolio-based instruction in facilitating secondary school language learner autonomy. Specifically, this study aims to answer the following two research questions: (1) Does portfolio-based instruction for out-of-class learning promote students’ autonomous attitudes? (2) Does portfolio-based instruction encourage them to put out-of-class learning into practice? The participants were 58 first-year junior high school students (treatment group, n = 28; control group, n = 30). Autonomous attitudes were assessed using the Autonomy Diagnosis Scale pre- and post-test. Portfolio-based instruction was conducted for three weeks, only for the treatment group. The results showed that while the instruction had a positive impact on the learners’ perceived autonomous attitudes, especially in their cognitive processes, their effects on out-of-class study (i.e., actual autonomous behavior) varied remarkably among students. Based on the overall results, the study provides the educational implications and directions for future research.

Modernism and Postmodernism Concepts in Education: Its Impact on EFL Students' Autonomy and Implication for EFL Teachers

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2022

Promoting learner autonomy is considered a vital concern to English Foreign Language (EFL) learners; so far, many attempts related to develop learner autonomy in various concepts. The present study aimed at examining the effect of Postmodernism and Modernism concepts on EFL learners. This study was carried out in the course of study at a high school in Iran. Accordingly, 60 learners between 16 and 17 years old, randomly chosen from a larger participant of 80 EFL learners concerning their achievement on the Oxford Placement Test (OPT), attending high school in Iran. The selected participants have been assigned into two groups (i.e., postmodernism and modernism concepts, respectively). Each group involved 30 participants. The control group (n=30) is usually taught through modernism concepts, whereas the experimental group (n=30) is exposed to postmodernism concepts. Over the course of this present study, the data was gathered through a pre-test and post-test learner autonomy questionnaire. The t-test statistical procedure was utilized for the research question. The findings of the result showed that postmodernism concepts significantly performed better than the modernism concepts group in the learner autonomy. This study showed that all those engaged in language teaching and learning could process to possess a better perspective on developing efficient instructions.

The Use of a Process Model to Introduce and Develop Autonomous Learning among Mexican University Students

Thesis

Feb 2022

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact an adapted model, designed according to levels of implementation, has on the fostering of autonomous learning among a group of Mexican university students who have been taught with teacher centred methods through their academic life. This research was conducted to have a better understanding of how to introduce and develop this approach among learners who have been teacher-dependent in their learning. Although autonomous learning has been explored extensively in different educational settings, this has not happened in Mexico. Some studies regarding this approach to learning have been conducted in this country; however, few have been done in relation to its introduction and promotion. Existing literature indicates that the previous has been achieved by different researchers around the world through the use process models. Considering the previous, an existing model was adapted to implement during this investigation to foster autonomous learning among students who had previously learnt with teacher-centred methods. The main research questions of this research are: what evidence indicates that there has been a development of autonomous learning among participants? And, what are the opinions of participants about learning autonomously? To answer these questions action research was conducted during one semester in one of the classes taught by the teacher/researcher at a public Mexican university. Qualitative data was collected through three instruments: learner diary, a questionnaire, and participant interviews. This information was organized and analysed by using N-vivo 12, coding and thematic analysis. The results showed that participants developed autonomous learning skills and adopted learning practices which are common in this approach. Furthermore, it was found that the levels of implementation included in the model made relevant contributions to foster autonomous learning. Moreover, it was discovered that the participants had positive opinions regarding the introduction and development of this approach to learning. The findings obtained led to several conclusions. First, process models can be employed to foster autonomous learning among Mexican university students who are accustomed to learning with teacher-centred methods. Although this involved a drastic change for many subjects, they were able to adapt to the new approach to learning at some point during the treatment. Second, autonomous learning needs to be introduced gradually when it is implemented with learners who are used to being teacher-dependent in their learning. The use of this strategy gives learners the opportunity to develop the skills needed and adopt the learning practices this approach requires. Third, the levels of implementation provide some steps that guide the introduction of autonomous learning, lead learners to acquire the knowledge they need, and provide opportunities for students to exercise their autonomy along the learning process. Finally, once subjects had adapted to learning autonomously, they welcomed this approach and preferred it over teacher-centred methods. The significance of this study is that it increases our understanding of how to introduce and develop autonomous learning among learners who are used to learning with teacher-centred methods. In addition, more knowledge was generated regarding how different components that have been used in models contribute to promote this approach. Finally, it was possible to learn about the perceptions Mexican university students have about autonomous learning and the suggestions they give to foster this approach to learning.

Predicting learner autonomy in collaborative learning: The role of group metacognition and motivational regulation strategies

Article

May 2022
LEARN MOTIV

Collaborative learning has a potential in the development of learner autonomy. However, it is seen that there is a need for studies on the role of group mechanisms in the development of learner autonomy in the collaborative learning process. In this regard, the purpose of this study was to examine the role of group metacognition and self-, co-, and socially shared regulation of motivation in predicting learner autonomy. The study was conducted with 350 university students. Data was analyzed by multinominal logistic regression analysis. The findings showed that planning and monitoring, which are components of metacognition at the group level, affect the autonomy. The findings of this research revealed that planning increases the probability of having a high level of learner autonomy, while tracking reduces the probability of having a low level of autonomy. In addition, it was determined that the regulation of motivation at the individual level affects learner autonomy. However, the effect of self-regulation of intrinsic motivation on the probability having high or low learner autonomy is found to be not significant. In the light of the research findings, suggestions were presented to promote autonomy in collaborative learning environments.

Learner Autonomy: A Crucial Target for EAP Instruction Assignment for the English for Academic Purposes Course

Research

Full-text available

Mar 2011

Mustafa Akıncıoğlu

Learner autonomy in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) settings. This paper examines various approached to define 'learner autonomy' while creating links to the motivational theories.

Energizing Teacher Research

Book

Full-text available

Mar 2022

Accounts by teachers working in Turkey of how they conducted or facilitated action research in their classrooms and thus energised their teaching.

Supporting Refugee Families in Scotland Through an Ecological, Multilingual Approach to Language Learning

Chapter

Apr 2022

Sarah Cox

In this chapter I seek to challenge monolingual teaching methods by proposing an ecological and multilingual ESOL pedagogy through the presentation of findings from an exploratory study with recently arrived adult refugees in Scotland. Using Critical Participatory Action Research and underpinned by decolonising methodology (Phipps A. Decolonising multilingualism: struggles to decreate. Multilingual Matters, Bristol, 2019b; Smith LT. Decolonising methodologies: research and indigenous peoples. Zed Books Limited, London, 1999), the research enables the examination of the gap between research, policy, and practice in the Scottish context. The research findings illustrate the benefits of harnessing a multilingual and ecological approach in a purposeful, strategic way and build on principles of translanguaging with individuals using their full “linguistic repertoire” (García O, Kleifgen JA. Educating emergent bilinguals: policies, programs, and practices for English language learners. Teachers College Press, New York, 2010). The study challenges imbalances within language learning both at an individual level in terms of learner/teacher relationships, and at societal level by addressing linguistic hierarchies and the dominance of English inside and outside the classroom. I draw conclusions about empowerment, language and identity for forcibly displaced persons undergoing periods of profound change, and the positive impact of the recognition of refugees’ own languages, highlighting the need to challenge restrictive language learning policies and practices.

Students' Engagement and Active Participation During the Pandemic

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2022

The mobility constraints due to the coronavirus COVID19 disease forced the universities to go online. Although online learning is familiar to students, online teaching and learning during the pandemic is something else. First of all, is like distance education when online teaching and learning is the only option. Extant research shows many disadvantages of exclusive online learning, such as lack of attention, decreased motivation, boredom, mental stress, and fatigue. Nevertheless, after two years of teaching and learning from home, teachers and students had time to adapt. This research is exploring the perceptions of students as regards online school with a focus on engagement and learning autonomy. A research model has been developed, analyzing the main factors that influence the students, engagement, and active participation. The model has been tested on a sample of 326 university students in the autumn of 2021. The results show that the best way to keep students engaged is to stimulate communication with the teacher and other students and to adapt online courses to be interactive, attractive, and motivating.

Finding a pathway to language learning advising through teacher autonomy within an Ignatian pedagogical model in a Mexican private university

Article

Mar 2022

Leticia A. Ruiz Guerrero

This research project aimed to respond to a need perceived as the self-access laboratory (Sas Lab) at a Jesuit Mexican private university reached a stage of maturity in its growth process. The analysis done of the development of Self-access, particularly in Mexico, for this research project, allows us to put forward that our self-access centre is part of the vanguard in our country, having evolved to the point now where we no longer see these spaces as just resource-filled facilities, but rather “person-centred social learning environments” (Mynard, 2016). For us the aim is to support the development of autonomy in learners, language learning is the vehicle to try to reach that goal. This perceived need meant that we required facilitators who would be better prepared to support the development of learner autonomy in the students visiting the Sas Lab. There was a need to prepare teacher-tutors to no longer just transfer teaching skills from their traditional classroom experience to the self-access environment. This meant having to better define the job of facilitators as Language Learning Advisors (LLAs) who are aptly prepared to deal with the overall care and support of the learner to encourage the development of learner autonomy. The main contribution to knowledge that this project proposed was the design of an intervention that would have the teacher-participants use their own autonomy in working together as a community of practice (CoP) to train themselves as LLAs. This intervention was meant to give teachers an opportunity to experience where they stood in terms of autonomy themselves and with this provide them with an understanding of what it would take to accompany a learner to develop it. Part of this novel design would be to use the Ignatian pedagogical model that promotes experiential contextualized learning that is the basis for the work done in Jesuit institutions, like the one where this research took place, to provide a framework for the intervention. This is a first explicit use of the Ignatian paradigm in an English Language Teaching (ELT) context, and it has yielded very promising results that will hopefully shine a light on the possible future applications of it in this and other fields. The intervention itself was done in stages that allowed participants, researcher and the process to have the necessary time to move organically and grow as needed. The first stage of the intervention tracked in an ethnographic study the experience of teachers in the English language programme as they were invited to take an active role in a change management project. This provided a baseline in terms of the overall understanding of teacher autonomy. The second stage of the study saw the formation of a CoP with volunteering participants who started to work towards training themselves as LLAs via means of their own autonomy. An ethnographic study provided an account of the experience and a case study analysis provided insight into the experience of some of the participants. A third stage of the study gathered the work done by the CoP in using their experience to put forward a professional development pathway that is now being used by the department to train and certify LLAs. The experience of having teachers going through a process of self-discovery and exploration of their own autonomy, to better understand where they stood and then to raise their own awareness from first-hand experience about what it takes to develop autonomy as a learner; was a process that had not been proposed before in language learning advising schemes in 3 Mexico or at an international level. Data gathered via means of an interview model designed to allow participants control over the process was proposed, to be consistent with the search for opportunities to support and develop autonomy that characterized the overall design of the intervention. In a wider stage, our experience in this project has brought us a better understanding of the impact of a training scheme that can allow participant teachers to see what it is like to try to take charge of one’s own learning; and learn what it takes to explore and develop autonomy individually and as part of a community learning together.

Reflective journal writing and learner autonomy

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2022

The study was an endeavor to investigate the impact of self and peer assessment on learner autonomy and its dimensions as well as language proficiency. It also aimed at finding the students attitude toward practicing the technique. The study enjoyed a quasi-experimental pretest post test design. To meet the objectives, 49 intermediate participants were assigned to a control (25 participants) and an experimental group (24 participants). Students proficiencies were investigated in both pretest and post test using the same versions of PET. Students' level of autonomy was also studied in both pre-test and post-test utilizing a multidimensional learner autonomy questionnaire. Self-assessment was utilized over a three-month period in 25 sessions. T-test analysis of the results of the post test proficiency test revealed no impact of the technique on language proficiency. Although the t-tests run to analyze the different dimensions of the questionnaire showed the improvement in just three dimensions of learner autonomy, an improvement in learner autonomy in general was indicated. To study the participants' attitudes toward self assessing themselves, the researcher asked the participants to write about their experience. The content analysis of the participants written experts indicated their positive attitudes toward using the technique.

Harmondsworth: Penguin; third edition 1986); and Finding a Language

Jan 1980

Language, the Learner and the School by Douglas Barnes, James Britton and Mike Torbe (Harmondsworth: Penguin; third edition 1986); and Finding a Language. Autonomy and Learning in School by Peter Medway (London: Writers & Readers, in association with Chameleon; 1980).

reflects the recent growth of research into how learners go about the business of mastering a foreign language. Learning to Learn English: a Course in Learner Training Newbury House; 1990) offer a wealth of practical advice on how to help learners towards more efficient learning

Jan 1987

J Wenden
Rubin

Wenden and J. Rubin (Prentice Hall International; 1987), reflects the recent growth of research into how learners go about the business of mastering a foreign language. Learning to Learn English: a Course in Learner Training, by. G. Ellis and B. Sinclair (Cambridge University Press; 1989), and Language Learning Strategies, by Rebecca L. Oxford (New York: Newbury House; 1990) offer a wealth of practical advice on how to help learners towards more efficient learning. Communication in the Modern Languages Classroom, by

Learners and Computers (Harlow: Longman; 1988) considers possible roles for computers in language learning in terms that are easily accommodated to discussion of learner autonomy) is a useful guide to communicative language learning activities based on a variety of computer pro- grams

Jan 1989

John Higgins 's Language

John Higgins's Language, Learners and Computers (Harlow: Longman; 1988) considers possible roles for computers in language learning in terms that are easily accommodated to discussion of learner autonomy. CALL, by David Hardisty and Scott Windeatt (Oxford University Press; 1989) is a useful guide to communicative language learning activities based on a variety of computer pro- grams.

Learner Autonomy 1: Definitions, Issues and Problems

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