Fostering students’ English Learning Autonomy

1、fostering students english learning autonomyintroduction the ultimate goal of english teaching in china is to develop learners communicative competence and good learning strategies, so as to become autonomous language learners and users. theoretically speaking, any kind of teaching is subjected to t

2、he eventual goal of educationto promote students learning autonomy.learner autonomy refers to the capability to determine the learning objectives, select methods, monitor the procedure and evaluate the results. from the early 1970s, our english teaching has increasingly emphasized the importance of

3、autonomous learning. since the 1980s, learner autonomy has gained momentum in the education field. today more and more students are required to become autonomous learners to fit the change pace of society. however, many teachers have not adjusted their roles and have not laid stress on promoting aut

4、onomous learning chapter 1 teachers role 1.1 definition of role the term “role” is a familiar one and its french circumflex has been worn away by frequent use. it can be defined generally as a part that people play in the performance of social life. a role, put in precise sociological terms by banto

5、n, is “a set of norms and expectation applied to incumbents of a particular position”. the incumbents this paper is concerned with are those who take up position in the english language class: english teachers. the concept “role” has become very popular in english language teaching (elt) and is a te

6、rm in common usage to denote the functions that teachers and learners perform during the course of lesson. in the social setting of the classroom, teachers and learners expectations about what are appropriate functions in various learning tasks will determine the role that each performs.1.2 teachers

7、 role in the traditional english language teaching in the 1960s and 1970s in particular there was much reflection in educational writing in western cultures on traditional teacher-directed, examination-oriented and grammar-and-vocabulary-based. the evaluation of a teacher had depended on the amount

8、of knowledge he or she crammed into the students head: the more, the better. the teacher is the unquestionable “authority, a knowledge-giver” (cortazzi and jin 1996), who dominates the class from the beginning to the end, while the students are just “ignorant audience” who write down the precious wo

9、rds and offer their applause and laughter caused by the admiration. the teaching is focused on linguistic competence rather than communication competence. there is little cooperation between teacher and students and the teacher gets little feedback from his or her “audience”.1.3 the need for the stu

10、dyas we all know, more and more people with good command of english are in urgent need. present chinese mode of instruction which aims at the transmission of knowledge in english language teaching and learning, cannot well develop learners autonomy and guide learners to learn how to learn, nor can i

11、t meet the change situation and economic and social need.with the development of english teaching reformation, many people realize the fact that there is an urgent need for english language teaching innovation. there is a feeling often aired in recent journals and conference speeches, that there has

12、 been too much “teaching” and not enough “l(fā)earning”. this perception has been at the heart of movements in favor of what has come to be known as the learner-centered or student-centered teaching. therefore there is a must for teacher to change his role to foster students english autonomous learning.

13、 so this paper will pay attention to teachers role and discuss how could a teacher change his role from authority to facilitator to explore students autonomy. meanwhile, some methods also are providingchapter 2 autonomous learning 2.1 autonomous as a goal of education today the important aspect of e

14、ducation is to teach students how to acquire knowledge and how to maintain enthusiastic about learning. since lifelong learning becomes more and more important, learner autonomy inevitably arouse public attention by means of researches and practice. the most common notion for autonomy is as a goal o

15、f education. fostering a learners autonomy should be regarded as one of the most important goals that teachers and educators try to pursue. on the other hand, learners autonomy lays the foundation of lifelong learning. we are now in the era of information explosion. there is a lot for us to learn in

16、 science and in the world. education itself has been affected by the world. we must combine learning with surviving in this world and notice the links between learning and real life because we are now in the world of learning. it goes without doubt that to improve students ability to learn autonomou

17、sly becomes the duty of every teacher. it is of course possible to apply this idea to english lifelong learning.2.2 definitions of learner autonomy autonomous learning is defined by jeffries (1990) as: “l(fā)earning is which an individual or group of learners study on their own possible for part of part

18、s of a course, without direct intervention from a tutor. this can involve learners in taking greater responsibility for what they learn, how they learn, and when they learn. it can also lead to learners being more involved in their own assessment. autonomous learning is likely to be most effective w

19、hen at least some support is available.” (jeffries: 1990)holec(2001:48) one of the earliest advocates of autonomy in language teaching has defined autonomy as “the ability to take change of ones own learning”. dickinson(1987, cited in gardner & miller,1996:6) accepts the definition of autonomy as a

20、“situation in which the learner is totally responsible for all of the decisions concerned with his or her learning and the implementation of those decisions”. boud suggests that autonomy is “an approach to educational practice” that emphasizes learners independence and learners responsibility. kenny

21、 (1999:431)states that autonomy is not only the freedom to learn but also “the opportunity to become a person”. more clearly, littlewood(1999:71) identifies autonomy should include the two features:1.students should take responsibility for their own learning.2.taking responsibility involves learners

22、 in taking ownership (partial or total) of many processes which have traditional belonged to the teacher, such as deciding on learning objectives, selecting learning methods and evaluating process. more recently, aoki defines learner autonomy as a capacity to take charge of ones own learning in the

23、service of ones perceived needs and aspiration. however, the author regard that autonomous learning, especially for middle school students, is an awareness or a kind of ability that learners study english more actively and efficiently because they cannot work like college students to select the cont

24、ents or determine the objectives. and also autonomous learning is a process, which is gradual, cumulative and collaborative. one does not become autonomous fully; one only works towards autonomy. it is consistent with nunans view (2000:26) that autonomy is not an “absolute” concept, but rather a “re

25、lative” concept, because there are degrees of autonomy and levels of autonomy learning depend on a range of factors which will be concerned in chapter five. it is very important to foster learners autonomy now. it is high time for middle school teachers to change their roles and teaching ways from t

26、eacher-centered to student-centered and try to help students become more autonomous to meet the requirements of quality education in the new situation. chapter3 teachers role in fostering autonomous learning different teaching approaches imply different roles for teachers and learners. student-cente

27、red teaching adds new responsibilities to teachers and learners. based on its theories of language, learning and teaching, this chapter seeks to provide changing role that teachers play in student-centered class.3.1 a historical glimpse of researches on teachers roleharmer(1998)suggests that most cl

28、assroom role required of the teacher can be placed somewhere along a continuum, with “teacher as controller” as one extreme, and “teacher as facilitator” at the other. harmers framework deals exclusively with roles that related to classroom procedures. teacher plays a controller role when he wants t

29、he whole class to be attending to what he has to say. other roles include the teacher as assessor who corrects or provides feedback to the student; the teacher as prompter when the teacher needs encourage students to participate or to provide information on procedural issues; the teacher as particip

30、ates when he participants as an equal in communicative activities; the teacher as tutor helping to clarify ideas, point out errors in rough drafts, etc. wringt(1991) classifies the term such as manager, resource provider, guide, evaluator, organizer and introductory into two major roles of teachers

31、in the classroom:“ 1. to create the conditions under which learning can take place: the social side of teaching.2. to impact, by a variety of means, knowledge to their learners: the task-oriented side of teaching.” (wright 1991:51)many linguists and scholars have made a great many researches on teac

32、hers role. ehrman describes teachers role as follows:“if the classroom is a stage in a theater, and students are actors, what is teacher? the teacher is many people in theater: director, prompter, coach, scriptwriter, audience, and above all, another actor, but they also emphasize different roles fr

33、om the array. for instance, in traditional teacher-centered methods, the role of director and scriptwriter are especially important, though there are others in more minor parts. humanistic approach has emphasized the role of couch and appreciative audience, and they have encouraged teacher to share

34、the role of director and scriptwriter with students. suggestopedia emphasize the importance of the set designer and effects manager, as well as a director who promotes a kind of regression in the service of the ego, permitting assumption of new roles by students. the silent way teacher begins as a d

35、irector but shift increasingly to audience and prompter. in communicative methodologies, teachers take all the roles” (ehrman and dornyei, 1998:222-223)the description of ehrman and dornyei is accurate, vivid and useful in helping teachers to identify and classify their self-concept and preferred te

36、aching style.a communicative approach involves redefining the traditional role of the teacher. several roles are assumed for teachers in communicative language teaching. breen and mann (2004:99) describe teachers role as the following terms: “the teacher has two main roles: the first role is to faci

37、litate the communication process between all participants on the classroom, and between these participants and the various activities and texts. the second role is to act as an independent participant within the learning-teaching group.” 3.2 teachers role in fostering autonomous learningthe classroo

38、m, under the control of an effective teacher, can support the willing learner strategies. therefore, the teacher plays a crucial role. but what is the role?in order to foster students leaning autonomy, the teacher has to act as a facilitator in student-centered teaching. the role of teacher is to gi

39、ve the students center stage in the classroom, providing a setting in which students play an active, inquiring role in their own learning.3.2.1 features of facilitatorwhat are the salient features of a facilitator in autonomous learning? according to voller, a facilitator provides psycho-social supp

40、ort and technical support. psycho-social support refers to the capacity of motivating learner, as well as the ability of raising learners awareness. technical support refers to helping learner to plan and carry out their learning, helping learners to evaluate themselves, and helping learners to acqu

41、ire the skills and knowledge.in focusing on the role of teacher as a facilitator in autonomous learning, this part makes clear that autonomous english learning dose not mean learners simply learn on their own. learners in the process of becoming autonomous need a teacher to support them in order to

42、reach the highest possible achievement. 3.2.2. teacher as a facilitator: a guide to interest in learningaccording to nunan (1996:20), learner autonomy is enhanced when we accelerate the process from input to output. in this sense, a teacher as a prompter plays an increasing role on how to make stude

43、nts exert their autonomy and motivate this process. when students are not sure how to start an activity, or what to do next, the teacher should give appropriate prompts (wang qiang, 2000:39). when a student does not seem to be ready for an answer, the teacher can give hints; when a student finishes

44、with a very short answer, the teacher should elicit more by saying “and?” “anything else?” “yes, but why?”besides, the teacher can also join one or two groups as “an equal partner” (breen and mann, 2004:147) in the process. once the activity has started, the teacher should change his role and join t

45、he students. he should not dominate or appear to be authoritative. 3.2.3 teacher as a facilitator: a guide to resource.although the conventional teaching method has been widely criticized, the teacher is still considered as a good and convenient resource for students. as a guide to resource, teacher

46、s could introduce some english magazines and newspapers, such as english salon, 21 century and china daily. some useful websites could be recommended as well, such as china daily, bliao, etc. besides, when the students had difficulty in learning, teachers would get ready to provide information. 3.2.

47、4 teacher as a facilitator: a guide to learning contentsthe most important and difficult role that the teacher has to play is to be an organizer. education in china is still exam-oriented. therefore, the teaching method hinders the tapping of the students potential. as a result, some students turn o

48、ut to be high scores but poor ability. accordingly, teachers intention is to convert the students from exam-oriented ones to more ability-oriented learners in the near future. so here, the teacher is not to a lecturer, knowledge transmitter, but rather a designer, and more important, a creator of en

49、vironment in which learners learn and learn how to learn.litterwood(2003:71-94) discovers that asian students want to explore knowledge themselves. some experts have made an experiment: “at an early stage of a class, students learned by themselves and discussed difficult words or sentences wit the c

50、lassmates when they read the text. then they wrote words beyond their comprehension in the blackboard. finally, the whole class discussed together. it was the teacher who explained the difficult ones if they still did not understand. after they answered comprehensive question, they would have opport

51、unities to ask the teacher some question, including the usage of some words and understanding of difficult sentences.” in this way, we could clearly see that the role of the teacher shifted from the interpreter of the class textbook to a language facilitator and the difficult points of the lesson ha

52、d been smoothed away with the help of the teacher as a solver. 3.2.5 teacher as a facilitator: an evaluator to the results it is generally believed that it is a major part of a teachers job to assess the students work. teachers should focus on students success or progress so that a success-oriented

53、learning atmosphere could be created. at the sane time the students will be more confident in autonomous learning. the evaluation should be objective, just and artistic. “great!” “excellent!” “wonderful!” “you really did a very good job!” were frequently used. a teacher can pursue his instructional

54、role in a variety of modes. teachers control the social behavior of their class in two ways: directly through classroom management procedures and indirectly through the learning activity. it is rare for a classroom english teacher to stick only one mode during the course of a lesson. what is more, w

55、hether teachers can best their students to become more autonomous depends on the degree they can fulfill their role as teachers. 3.3 conclusion in this chapter, i highlight a facilitator as detailed roles: prompter, participant, resource provider, organizer, designer, solver and evaluator. all the r

56、oles are very important in fostering learners english learning autonomy. in the next chapter, i will apply some strategies for teachers to create learners autonomy in english classroom teaching. chapter 4 strategies for teachers to create learners autonomy in english language teaching. at present, a

57、 number of students still cannot use english they have learned experienced. such phenomenon has set us to reconsider the development of student autonomy. to solve the problem above, teacher should try their best to enhance autonomous learning in english classroom teaching by applying some appropriat

58、e teaching strategies.4.1 to create a class phenomenoncambell (1991:33) argues, “when students are totally immersed in the learning environment and fully engaged in the task, they are better able to internalize the meaning of what is being learned. individuals must be enabled to construct their own private learning spaces according to their needs and fill them with personally meaningful learning material. ”in order to create a good class phenomenon of students autonomous learning the teachers should take some ways into classes,