Page 144 - Beyond Methods

132 Promoting learner autonomy
In the field of L2 education, scholarly interest in learner auton- omy received a shot in the arm during the late 1970s and early ‘80s with the advent and advancement of communicative language teach- ing, which sought to put the learner at the center of L2 pedagogy. A review of the literature on learner autonomy in L2 education re- veals a diversity of ideas as well as terms. Some of the terms that are widely used in the context of learner autonomy are: self-instruction, self-direction, self-access learning, and individualized instruction. To paraphrase Leslie Dickinson (1987, p. 11),
• self-instruction refers to situations in which learners are working without the direct control of the teacher;
• self-direction refers to situations in which learners accept re- sponsibility for all the decisions concerned with learning but not necessarily for the implementation of those decisions;
• self-access learning refers to situations in which learners make use of self-access teaching material or instructional technology that is made available to them;
• individualized instruction refers to situations in which the learn- ing process is adapted, either by the teacher or by the learner, to suit the specific characteristics of an individual learner.
As these definitions indicate, there are varying degrees of learner involvement and teacher engagement, ranging from total learner control over the aims and activities of learning to partial learner con- trol to indirect teacher control in terms of methods and materials, and place and pace of study.
Reflective task 6.1
Focusing on any one class you have taught or taken recently, consider the degree of autonomy exercised by the learners in that class in terms of goals, tasks, and assessment. Think about possible factors that may have con- tributed to total or partial or no learner control in that class.
In spite of the conceptual and terminological variations found in the L2 literature, one can easily discern two complementary views
on learner autonomy, particularly with regard to its aims and ob- jectives. For the purpose of analysis and discussion, I shall call