Learner Autonomy

What Is Learner Autonomy and How Can It Be Fostered? by Dimitrios Thanasoulas

It was very nice to learn about "What is Learner Autonomy and How Can it Be fostered?" by Dimitrios Thanasoulas on (http://iteslj.org/Articles/Thanasoulas-Autonomy.html) that autonomy is 'the ability to take charge of one's learning'. The term autonomy has come to be used in at least five ways:

·         for situations in which learners study entirely on their own;

·         for a set of skills which can be learned and applied in self-directed learning;

·         for an inborn capacity which is suppressed by institutional education;

·         for the exercise of learners' responsibility for their own learning;

·         for the right of learners to determine the direction of their own learning.

In my opinion, it would be very difficult for almost all of us to encourage greater autonomy in students without technology.

Within the context of education, there seem to be seven main attributes characterising autonomous learners:

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, i.e., to communicate in the target language at all costs;

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; and

7.      have a tolerant and outgoing approach to the target language.

I also learnt about 'Learner Autonomy and Dominant Philosophies of Learning'

In this section, I found three dominant approaches to knowledge and learning.

1. Positivism is premised upon the assumption that knowledge reflects objective reality.

2. Constructivism is an elusive concept and, within applied linguistics, is strongly associated with Halliday. As Candy observes, '[o]ne of the central tenets of constructivism is that individuals try to give meaning to, or construe, the perplexing maelstrom of events and ideas in which they find themselves caught up'.

3. Critical theory, an approach within the humanities and language studies, shares with constructivism the view that knowledge is constructed rather than discovered or learned. 

I also found there two learning strategies: a) Cognitive Strategies and b) Metacognitive Strategies.

The text is very informative.