Promoting Self-learning and Autonomy

It is logical to think that learners, who get involved into a learning situation that requires self-learning and autonomy, do not have the knowledge and skills to plan, monitor, control, assess, review, and evaluate their learning development. It would be cleaver that self-learning students would have a learner advisor who guides them through the learning process; helps them to identify their goals; suggests them proper material and strategies; motivates, supports, and encourages them; shows them how to self-evaluate; and helps them to identify the most conventional learning approach. Advising, according Carson and Maynard (2013), is “the process of helping students to direct their own paths and become better, more autonomous language learners” (p. 57)

To achieve the tasks mentioned previously, the learning adviser must be aware of the knowledge and abilities that each student has to succeed in his or her autonomy development. A good way to measure these characteristics in a student, introspective and retrospective self-reports, diaries, and evaluation sheets can be great tools. With these kinds of work, the adviser is able to find out the techniques and strategies that the students have been using, their feelings towards a particular skill, problems in the studies, and expectations of a course.

As can be seen, developing autonomy in a self-learning process is not an easy task; the students have to be organized, have motivation, and work hard. The best way for a student to keep up in the learning process is to have a learning advisor who can guide them, advise them, and keep them motivated to achieve their goals.  

 

Mynard, J. (January, 2011). Association Internationale De Linguistique Appliquée. Recovered March, 2014, from http://ailarenla.org/lall/january2011/mynard_b_2011/

Mynard, J., & Carson, L. (2012). Advising in Language Learning: Dialogue, Tools and Context. New York: Pearson Education Limited.

Thanasoulas, D. (November, 2000). The Internet TESL Journal. Recovered March, 2014, from http://iteslj.org/Articles/Thanasoulas-Autonomy.html