Page 149 - Beyond Methods

Promoting learner autonomy 137
that the most successful students use a greater variety of strategies and use them in ways appropriate to the language learning task and that less-successful learners not only have fewer strategy types in their repertoire but also frequently use strategies that are inappro- priate to the task. The use and nonuse of appropriate strategies for appropriate tasks can easily make the difference between learning and nonlearning. It is therefore necessary to train learners in the effective use of learning strategies.
Reflective task 6.2
If the effective use of learning strategies will help learners become au- tonomous, in what way, do you think, can teachers contribute to the devel- opment of such an autonomy?
Learner Training
Successful learner training includes psychological as well as strate- gic preparation. Owing to past experience, adult L2 learners tend to bring with them preconceived notions about what constitutes learning and what constitutes teaching. They also bring with them prior expectations about the role-relationship between the learner and the teacher in the classroom. A crucial task of the teacher wish- ing to promote learner autonomy is to help learners take responsi- bility for their learning, and to bring about necessary attitudinal changes in them. This psychological preparation should be com- bined with strategic training that helps learners understand what the learning strategies are, how to use them for accomplishing var- ious language learning tasks, how to monitor their performance, and how to assess the outcome of their learning.
Clearly, learners’ ability to take charge of their own learning can be made possible only if they are trained to identify and use appro- priate strategies. They not only have to consider the strategies that contribute to effective learning, but, more importantly, they have to discover those that suit their learning objectives and their person- ality traits best. Accordingly, learner training “aims to provide learners with the alternatives from which to make informed choices about what, how, why, when, and where they learn. This is not to