[ English for Academic Purposes ]
Fostering autonomous
language learning
I
Seyhun Ogut
chose a longer version of this title for
the presentation I delivered at CLESOL
discusses the benefits of out- 2021 in Auckland, describing the
reflective action project as part of my
of-class language learning. master’s degree in 2019. It’s still a
long title, isn’t it? Not that I was trying to
gather the attention of virtual conference
attendees by using all the hype words; this
phrase defines part if not all my teaching
philosophy. Language learning is a never-
ending process, and it cannot be limited
to a classroom. As a non-native speaker/
teacher of English, I experience this every
day. For me it has been more than 30
years of learning English, 20 of which
include teaching it; and I am constantly
learning something new. Luckily, I do have
sufficient learning strategies to cope with
56 Volume 31 Issue 2
‘new’ language whenever I encounter it.
That is why my teaching philosophy also
includes fostering those strategies in class
so that my learners will continue to learn
even after completing the courses I teach.
Out-of-class language
learning and motivation
Numerous studies show that high
achievers often attribute their success to
out-of-class learning activities (Nunan
1991, as cited in Wang, 2012). Those
activities may include any kind of learning
that takes place outside the classroom
and involves self-instruction, naturalistic
learning, or self-directed naturalistic
learning (Benson, 2011).
www.modernenglishteacher.com

During the reflective action project,
the course I taught was called NZCEL
(New Zealand Certificate in English
Language) Level 4 Academic Qualifier,
which is designed to help learners gain
the necessary skills to help them study
at tertiary level in New Zealand. So, the
curriculum is mostly based on university-
related themes and topics, and the tasks
and assessments are related to relevant
academic skills such as writing essays,
note-taking, giving presentations, etc.
However, the motivational patterns of the
learners in the class do not always reflect
academic enthusiasm. At that time, I had
a class of 21 adult migrant learners of 10
different nationalities, aged between 20
and 66, with various levels of education.
The needs analysis at the beginning of
this course usually shows less than half
of the learners to be interested in further
university study. Having completed all
other available courses (general and
employment qualifiers), some students still
enrol in the academic qualifier without any
academic goals for the future. Some enrol
to further advance their language skills,
and unfortunately, some enrol to continue
receiving full-time student benefits.
As a course requirement, learners are
expected to keep a log of the activities that
they do in English outside the classroom
as evidence of self-directed study. This is
called their ‘Language Log Book’ (LLB).
Learners need to record at least one
activity per week for reading, listening,
or watching TV or movies noting down
what they did, when, and for how long,
and add additional comments (e.g., Was
it difficult? Was it interesting? What did
they learn from it? etc.) Teachers then
collect the LLBs every five weeks before
the assessments and give feedback. The
whole course is an 18-week blended full-
time course (22 hours) but only 12 hours
are contact hours. Together with other
assigned online homework, LLBs count as
the extra work that they need to do to be
full-time students.
Reflection and action
Although it has been a course requirement,
for several reasons I did not believe it
had been used properly for the maximum
benefit of the learners and that was one
reason I chose this focus for my reflective
action project. First, there was no time
in the curriculum to include or model
www.modernenglishteacher.com
[ English for Academic Purposes ]
  the tasks and
assessments
are related to
relevant academic
skills .... However,
the motivational
patterns of the
learners in the
class do not always
reflect academic
enthusiasm.  language learning activities. However,
learning strategies outside class with the
students. The program was already heavily
loaded with 12 assessments, allowing
little room for the delivery timetable
modifications. In addition, although it
was a requirement, there was no reward
or penalty for completing or failing to
complete LLBs. Once students realised
this, unfortunately, it became difficult to
motivate them. I had taught the same
course for six different cohorts and this
class was my seventh. This project made
me realise that somewhere in between
I, as the teacher, had lost my motivation
to encourage students to complete the
LLBs. This made my heart heavy as I
believe to be a successful teacher I need
to be motivated. Institutional restrictions
and curriculum requirements had slowly
turned me into a teacher who just followed
the delivery timetable and inevitably
taught to the assessment. But I was
unhappy to be this type of teacher. So as
an action point for the project, my aim was
to create three lesson plans to increase my
students’ intrinsic motivation for out-of-
class language learning by emphasising
the advantages and by modelling several
useful activities that they could do; and
reflect upon my practice to utilise LLBs
better so that learners would develop
skills and strategies that they would
continue using while doing out-of-class
English activities even after they finished
the course.
Throughout my reflective teaching
project, I wrote reflective journals,
received continuous feedback from my
mentor and organised meetings with
fellow teachers who also had LLBs in
their curriculum. To re-motivate myself
I chose to have a group discussion with
three teachers who had recently started
working at our organisation. I chose new
teachers because I was once happy to
hear that LLBs were a component of the
course. I improved my English through
watching, listening, and reading authentic
materials and I had been telling all my
learners that this was the key to success
in language learning. So, in theory LLBs
could provide concrete evidence that the
students were engaged in out-of-class
over time I found myself spending less
and less time focusing on LLBs. Apart
from no punitive consequences, it was
difficult to check the authenticity of the
entries that students made. They could
choose to write about anything. This
could be an advantage as they oversee
what they read, listen to, or watch.
However, on the flip side, it could turn
out to be a disadvantage as we could not
check whether they did those entries that
week or if they filled in five weeks’ worth
of entries in a day! Who knew? I realised
that with each passing semester, there
was always a handful of students who
left their LLBs blank – they must have
been the ones who, from doing previous
qualifiers, knew there wouldn’t be any
consequence of failing or not completing
the course. This was a source of great
frustration for me and might be the
reason I started to neglect this valuable
tool. I thought talking to new teachers
who might be unaware of those concerns
would refresh my perspective towards
LLBs and increase my motivation.
As expected, the new teachers’ attitudes
towards LLBs were more optimistic than
my attitude at that time. They agreed
that asking students to write down what
they do outside the class increases the
likelihood of them doing something outside
the class. When I informed the teachers
that students could still get a certificate
without making a single entry in their
LLBs or completing an online unit, they
were surprised and disappointed. I then
explained to them that I planned to
create three lesson plans to implement
into the delivery timetable with the aim
Volume 31 Issue 2 57
[ English for Academic Purposes ]
of increasing student motivation and
participation in LLBs. They liked the idea
and we discussed ideas of how to achieve
that. We all agreed that checking the LLBs
regularly every week, establishing good
goal setting, equipping them with effective
learning outside of class techniques, and
connecting those activities with their real-
life settings would help students to sustain
their motivation to complete the LLBs.
At this point, readers might wonder
why it was difficult to motivate learners
living in an English-speaking society to
take part in activities in English. Well, to
be honest, as an adult migrant myself,
I know that taking part in activities
outside class is easier to say than it is to
do. Most of my students have busy lives.
With little time to spend on themselves
and juggling work, family, and studying,
it is understandable that they wish to
spend time with people from their own
communities. I do that too. For example,
I spend most of my weekends with
friends from my own country, and the
same is true of my students. Telling them
to find a friend from another country is
not always the easiest fix. My aim was
to create lesson plans to increase their
intrinsic motivation for out-of-class
language learning by emphasising the
advantages and by modelling several
useful activities that they could do.
The lessons
For three weeks I set aside one hour
from the delivery timetable for my action
project. The first lesson for my action
project was scheduled for week 7 of the
course, right after the first assessment
week. I planned to use the first lesson to
raise awareness of the importance and
benefits of self-directed language study
with a speaking skill focus. I checked the
first LLB (weeks 1–5) and prepared a basic
‘find-someone-who’ activity out of their
entries as a warm-up speaking practice.
Then I told them that there was a positive
correlation between LLB completion and
assessment results. This attracted their
attention. Then in groups I asked them
to write down the benefits on a piece
of paper.
The focus of the second lesson was
pragmatics, noticing language features
and useful phrases for specific speech
acts and situations. To begin with I
58 Volume 31 Issue 2
  asking students to write down what
they do outside the class increases the
likelihood of them doing something outside
the class .... connecting those activities with
their real-life settings would help students
to sustain their motivation 
talked about my own language learning
experience; how I used magazines and TV
shows to improve my ‘teenage’ English
to be accepted when I first moved to an
English-speaking country at the age of 16.
I showed examples of TV shows I watched.
Then we brainstormed TV shows that we
could elicit language from for different
situations. To give an example, we looked
at short clips of a medical drama TV show
to elicit the language they could use in a
doctor’s appointment.
The last lesson was on exploring different
reading resources with a language focus
on collocations. Learners often say that
they feel like they are not studying while
they do out-of-class activities in English,
especially if the only study skill they
know is to translate all the unknown
vocabulary. In this lesson we looked
into various sources with different levels
of difficulty and elicited collocations
and useful phrases that they could use
elsewhere productively.
Results
There was clear evidence, after having
just three contact hours devoted to
raising awareness of the importance
and benefits of LLBs and exemplifying
different learning strategies that they
could utilise autonomously in their free
time. Prior to these motivation sessions
and strategy building modelling activities,
the first LLB submission rate was less
than half of the class. In the second
submission six more students completed
their LLBs. I was delighted!
Research suggests the more autonomous
learners are, the more successful they
can be in their language learning goals.
Self-directed out-of-class language learning
activities are among the highly effective
learning strategies which create learning
autonomy. One assumes that living in
an English-speaking country, learners
would inevitably immerse themselves in
English outside the class and pick up the
nuances of the language. However, this
is not always the case. Some students
have lived here for decades yet cannot
speak confidently. This is often because
they live, interact and converse within
their own community groups. It is my
belief that Language Logbooks are one
way to encourage them to be involved in
out-of-class language language activities,
which eventually leads them to be more
competent language users.
References
Benson P (2011) Language learning and teaching
beyond the classroom: An introduction to the field.
In: P Benson and H Reinders (Eds) Beyond the
language classroom (pp. 7–16). Basingstoke, UK:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Wang D (2012) Self-directed English language
learning through watching English television
drama in China. Changing English 19 (3) 339–348
Doi: 10.1080/1358684X.2012.704584
Seyhun Ogut is an
EAP Kaiako (teacher)
at Dynaspeak – Te
Wananga o Aotearoa,
New Zealand. She
has an MA degree in
language teaching
from AUT. Seyhun
began her career
in Turkey teaching
undergraduate students Academic English
in the early 2000s and her interests include
materials design, testing and assessment, and
intercultural teaching.
www.modernenglishteacher.com