B.

Kumaravadivelu

Beyond Methods:
Macrostrategies for Language Teaching
Chapter 6:
Promoting Learning Autonomy

Students: Berari Alexandra Diana

Muha Maria
 Outline
I. Promoting Learner Autonomy
II. Narrow View of Learner Autonomy: Learning to
Learn
II.1. Learning Strategies
II.2. Activity
II.3. Learner Training
II.4. What Teachers Can Do
II.5. What Learners Can Do
III. Broad View of Learner Autonomy: Learning To
Liberate
IV. Degrees of Autonomy
V. Microstrategies For Promoting Learning Autonomy
 I.1. Promoting Learner Autonomy

“ Learners must no longer sit there and expect to be taught; teachers

must no longer stand up there teaching all the time. Teachers have
to learn to let go and learners have to learn to take hold.” Brian Page
1992, p. 84
Philosophical Reason
-> think independently
Thought
Psychological Reasons
Autonomy -> Cognitive Psychology
= - integration of knowledge within a
Freedom personal framework
of -> Humanistic Psychology
-the promotion of learners’ self-esteem
Action through personal ownership of learning
-> Educational Psychology
-connection between learner autonomy
and learner motivation
 I.2. Promoting Learner Autonomy

Self-Instruction Self-Direction Self-Access Individualized

Instruction
Learners are Learners accept Learners make use The learning
working without the responsibility for all of self-access process is adapted
direct control of the the decisions teaching material or to suit the specific
teacher. concerned with instructional characteristics of an
learning, but not technology that is individual learning.
necessarily for the made available to
implementation of them.
those decisions.
Table 1. Learner Autonomy Terms

-> A Narrow View -> to learn to learn

Two Views
-> A Broad View -> to learn to liberate
 II.5. What Teachers Can Do
Negotiate about course content and methodology

Share information about language and language learning

Encourage discussion about language and language learning

Help learners to become aware of the alternative strategies

available

Create a learning environment where learners can experiment

Allow learners to form their own views

Counsel and give guidance to individual learners

 Reflective Task
If you wish to implement some of the
learner training guidelines given above, what
possibilities and limitations do you anticipate
in your specific learning/teaching context?
Focus, among other factors, on the attitudes
of administrators, colleagues, and students.
 II.5.1. What Teachers Can Do
The learner training should be:

• Informed- the purpose should be made

explicit
• Self-Regulated- how to plan and regulate the use of the
strategy and how to monitor the difficulties

• Contextualized- relevant to the context of the

subject matter content/skill
• Interactive
• Diagnostic – information on which strategies/how
well students use them should be
collected
 III. Broad View of Learner Autonomy: Learning
To Liberate
“ In proposing a political orientation for learner
autonomy, therefore, we need a considerably expanded
Critical
notion of the political which would embrace issues
Thinkers such as the societal context in which learning takes
place, roles and relationships in the classroom and
outside, kinds of learning tasks, and the content of
Liberatory the language that is learned.”
Autonomy Benson

Sociopolitical
“… is not so much a question of learning how
Impediments
to learn as it is a question of learning how
to struggle for cultural alternative”
Intellectual Pennycook
Tools
 III.2. Broad View of Learner Autonomy:
Learning To Liberate

Diaries or
Mini- Learning Critical
Journal Cyberspace
Ethnographers Communities Thinking
Entries