Through the reading that I did in this week, I learned a lot of information about learners autonomy. What is learner autonomy?
Learner autonomy according to Dimitrios is "the ability to take charge of one's
learning". Henri Holec is the "father" of learner autonomy. He believes that
learner autonomy means that the learners are responsible of their own learning,
study at their own pace and use their own strategies and learning styles to gain
certain skills.
Another definition for learner autonomy is "a process
that enables learners to recognize and assess their own needs, to choose and
apply their own learning strategies or styles eventually leading to the
effective management of learning" (Penaflorida 2002, p.346). These two
definitions are similar in term of defining learner autonomy.
There are
many synonyms to the term learner autonomy such as learner independence,
self-access learning, self-paced learning and distant learning.
There
are seven main attributes of autonomous learners which are:
1. Autonomous
learners have insights into their learning styles and strategies
2. Take an
active approach to the learning task at hand
3. Are willing to take
risks
4. Are good guessers
5. Attend to form as well as to content,
that is, place importance on accuracy as well as appropriacy
6. Develop the
target language into a separate reference system and are willing to revise and
reject hypotheses and rules that do not apply
7. Have a tolerant and
outgoing approach to the target
language
http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Learner_autonomy
From my
experience some of the students are dependent on teachers on everything. They do
not like to go and search or monitor their learnering. As I remember there is a
section in the course book called self study. It contains many activities to be
done by students individuals as self study but about 80% of them do not even
look at it. They tend to copy answers from their classmate or ask teachers for
answers. We need to foster learner autonomy more in our school.
