Hello everybody,
Moving from a teacher-centered class to a student-centered class is inevitable now. We have to create the motivation inside our students to be independent learners.
Here is my reflection folowed by my own plan on AUTONOMY:
I read the articles mentioned. A lot of definitions are given for “Autonomy”, but a simple definition is “the ability to take charge of one's learning, teacherless Learning”. I got through the Autonomy’s phases and the main seven attributes of an autonomous learner. I read the three dominant philosophies of learning.
The articles mentioned the conditions needed for learning autonomy: cognitive and metacognitive strategies on the part of the learner, motivation, attitudes, and knowledge about language learning.
The teacher’s role is stressed: Teachers have a crucial role to play in launching learners into self-access and in lending them a regular helping hand to stay afloat.
How Can Learner Autonomy be promoted?
The articles mentioned some strategies:
1. Self-reports
2. Diaries and Evaluation Sheets
3. Persuasive Communication as a Means of Altering Learner Beliefs and Attitudes
My own ideas to encourage greater autonomy in students:
1. Teaching students different learning strategies and study strategies that suit their learning Styles.
2. Enhancing their receptive skills (listening and understanding different English dialects, reading; scanning, skimming…)
3. Enhancing writing skills; summarizing, writing reports, letters, essays, reviews…etc
4. Enhancing critical/creative thinking, problem solving skills
5. Helping get the skills of self-evaluation and evaluating the work of others
6. Guiding students to different resources
Helping students to promote Autonomy using technology across the course:
1. Giving students “the tip of the day/ week” in using technology
2. Internet Search skills
3. Creating and using blogs, WebQuests, groups, websites…etc
4. Recommending useful learning sites from time to time
5. Giving them tasks, which are basic parts of the course, as homework
6. Personalizing part of the course
7. Giving positive feedback to autonomous learners’ activities.
All the best
Ahmed Khattab
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Dear Ahmed,
ReplyDeleteThank you for nicely summarizing the ideas from the articles and adding many useful suggestions of your own for promoting learner autonomy. I like the "tip of the day/week" idea, especially when different learners each day/week are responsible for sharing the information they learned from the site with their classmates. They're getting more information for themselves that way and they're providing more for their classmates at the same time.
Yours,
Deborah