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Helping Students to Learn Autonomy

Give someone a fish and you will feed him for a day. Teach them to fish, and you feed them for life. An autonomous learner is someone who is able to learn on his own. In a sense, every learner is autonomous to some extent because every student in the classroom has to learn for him/herself. Teachers try to help students learn by providing opportunities for them to practice the new language in class as well as revise and learn at home, but they cannot learn for their students.

Successful students are those who take responsibility for their learning. We can promote this by encouraging and fostering students’ ability to remember, learn, extrapolate and achieve on their own. Think about something you have learnt to do. Someone showed you what to do and how to do it, but in the end it was up to you to try for yourself. The moment that you did this was the moment that you really began to learn.

There is a convincing evidence that people who take the initiative in learning (pro-active learners) learn more things and learn better than do people who sit at the feet of teachers, passively waiting to be taught (reactive learners). For reactive learners, becoming more autonomous seems to imply two things. Firstly, there is the need for a change in perception about what language learning involves and a change in the expectation that language can only be learned through the guidance of a specialist teacher. Secondly, there is the need of acquisition of techniques with which learners can manage their self-directed learning. These can be: fixing objectives for learning, deciding on the content of a learning program, selecting methods, self-monitoring of progress, and self-evaluation.

The teacher then might be assumed to have a responsibility for fostering autonomy through a process of learner training. This can be defined as a set of procedures or activities which raise learners’ awareness of what is involved in the process of learning a second language, which encourage learners to become more involved in and responsible for their own learning.

Motivation is “the motor” of learning; without it learning is unlikely to take place. When students choose to learn, they are motivated, but if English is obligatory for them, we cannot count on this type of motivation. We need to develop intrinsic motivation, which comes from the sense of pleasure in learning. This is when students enjoy learning and feel they are successful. Giving students more autonomy can have a positive effect on motivation. All this is likely to make them successful learners, which will increase their self-esteem and their enjoyment, which will in turn increase their motivation.

Language learning should not be restricted to the classroom. Students can learn outside the classroom, and they can also learn without the help of the teacher. Our students will not always be with us, and we do not want them to be dependent on us. Of course, we will be there to help them during a limited period, but the greatest help we can give them is to teach them how to help themselves. The ability to gain knowledge is far better than knowledge itself.