CHAPTER 3: LITERATURE REVIEW: AUTONOMY (CONTINUED)
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3.2.1.3.5. Roles: the learner
Given a situation in which the learner is generally "an individual who is conditioned by a pattern of cultural forces that are not harmonious to learner autonomy, independence or self-direction" (Pierson 1996:52), and given also that "a fundamental principle of autonomous learning is that the locus of control is in the hands of the learner" (Pierson 1996:50), Kelly observes that "learners need to undergo a considerable transformation of their beliefs about language and their role as learners in order to be able to undertake independent learning effectively" (1996:94). However, Esch makes the point that "cultural differences may not be the main barrier to the promotion of the concept of autonomy in countries with a group-oriented tradition such as China" (1996a:46; cf. Littlewood 1999:90), and Nunan (1996), Esch, (1996a) and Little (1996a), give evidence that traditional learning practices and cultural traits may actually contribute to the development of learner autonomy (cf. Ho & Crookall 1995; Pierson 1996; section 2.4).

The role-change inherent in acquiring "the ability to take charge of one's own learning" (Holec 1980:3) is especially noticeable in the Asian context (the focus of attention of this study), and Pierson's (1996:52) description of learning (in Hong Kong) as static and other-directed, with the teacher transmitting correct knowledge and students passively absorbing that knowledge, is also applicable to Korea. Stevick (1976) outlines the disadvantages of this view of education, observing that such a "Parent-Child" relationship between teacher and the learners, learning is likely to be "defensive", as learners seek to protect themselves from the possibility of being exposed or embarrassed. Such learning is like a suit of armour: "... a burden, to be worn as little as possible and cast off entirely (i.e. forgotten) at the first safe opportunity" (Stevick 1976:110). Littlejohn (1983:597) adds the cognitive perspective that "there may in fact be as many approaches to language learning as there are language learners ... such teacher-led classes may actually do more to hinder language learning than to facilitate it" (cf. Krashen 1982:68-70) and concludes that "We need to move away from the teacher's ‘I think you need this' and more toward the learner's ‘I know I need this'.

3.2.1.3.6. Roles: the Teacher
The decision to promote autonomy comes usually from the teacher, and the success of attempts to empower learners to become actively involved in their learning depends to a large extent on the teacher's ability to redefine roles (Hill 1994:214, cf. Dickinson 1992 [foreword by Little 1992]; Little 1995), which Dickinson (1987:133) sees as the major adjustment for the teacher. Wright (1987:45-6) summarises teacher/student roles as a complex set of interacting factors, both interpersonal (social role, status and power, attitudes, beliefs, personality, motivation) and task-related (the extent to which any learning task activates individual's personal goals, and how it stimulates their affective and cognitive faculties), and on this basis, defines a teacher's role as having two functions: a management function (the social side of teaching), and an instructional function (the task-oriented side). Allwright (1989, cited in Dickinson 1987:90) notes that the teacher-as-manager function (determining learning goals, making decisions about materials, deciding how the materials will be used, keeping records, evaluating progress, allocating time to tasks, deciding on what tasks will be done, and who should do them, what groupings the learners will work in, etc.), is "daunting" and suggests that the responsibility for at least some of these might be shared with the learners. In terms of the instructional function, the promotion of autonomous learning also implies that the learner should take on responsibilities previously "owned" by the teacher, and leads to a view of teachers as "helpers", counsellors, "learning advisors" and learning resources ("knowers") (Carver 1982; Littlejohn 1983:595; Dickinson 1987; Hunt, Gow & Barnes 1989; Kelly 1996), extending the controller/facilitator continuum (Harmer 1983).  In this view, the teacher becomes a skilled manager of human beings with access to a body of language and learning knowledge (Hunt, Gow & Barnes 1989:211):

The ideal helper is warm and loving. He accepts and cares about the learner and about his problems, and takes them seriously. He is willing to spend time helping. He is approving, supportive, encouraging and friendly; and he regards the learner as an equal. As a result of these characteristics, the learner feels free to approach him and can talk freely and easily with him in a warm and relaxed atmosphere. (Dickinson 1987:122)

This redefined role is far from any abdication of responsibility on the part of the teacher, requiring as it does, professional knowledge and skills, as outlined by Dickinson (1987). In this list (adapted from Carver, 1982:33 and McCafferty ND:22), knowledge and skills are needed in the following areas:

1.  the learners' mother tongues: in order to be able to communicate with the learners without difficulty and with a minimum risk of misunderstandings;

2.  the target language: in order to help the learner with all or most of items 3 - 11;

3.  needs analysis:, to help the learner to identify and describe his/her needs in language learning;

4.  setting objectives: in order to help the learner to break down these needs into achievable objectives;

5.  linguistic analysis: in order to identify for the learner the key learning points in authentic texts in subject areas relevant to learners with specific language requirements;

6.  materials: in order to help the learner to find appropriate materials from the resources of the institution (including published materials);

7.  materials preparation: in order to prepare appropriate materials from authentic texts, and in order to adapt published and in-house materials for self-instruction;

8.  assessment procedures: in order to help learners to assess their proficiency and to develop self-assessment techniques;

9. learning strategies: in order to advise learners about the best ways for them to go about their learning, and in order to be able to recommend alternatives to learners who are not succeeding;

10. management and administration: in order to maintain lists of native speakers of the target languages;

11.  librarianship: in order to establish, maintain and run the self-access resources centre. (Adapted from Dickinson, 1987:123)

Kelly (1996:94) sees language counselling as "a valid application of counselling within education" and provides a checklist of the macro-skills and micro-skills needed by the teacher-as-language-learning-counsellor, while acknowledging that notions of individuality and self-responsibility may not apply to non-western cultures "where different theories of the person are embedded in social practice" (Kelly 1996:97). He makes the point however, that making a cross-cultural adjustment to a "foreign" or different learning style can happen within cultures (between subcultures) as well as across cultures (as in the shift from secondary school to university), and that counselling is appropriate in this case, as describd in. tables XII, XIII (below). In these tables, macro-skills describe particular language counselling strategies that can help facilitate learner self-management of learning, and micro skills are component behaviours that come into play in a variable way during any interaction with a learner.

TABLE XII: THE MACRO-SKILLS OF LANGUAGE COUNSELLING (KELLY 1996:95) 

TABLE XIII: THE MICRO-SKILLS OF LANGUAGE COUNSELLING (KELLY 1996:96) 

Hunt, Gow & Barnes (1989) also offer guidelines for the "enhancement of self-management skills":

• Encourage the students to decide their own goals.

• Intervene only when necessary.

• Teach general rules and principles and when to apply them.

• Invite students to take responsibility in the key areas of their learning.

• Enhance motivation by:

• Selecting topics of intrinsic interest

• Minimising external rewards

• Ensuring active participation

•  Ensure ecological validity of tasks and settings

•  Give explicit feedback on the purpose and usefulness of cognitive strategies (1989:212).

Promotion of learner autonomy can require a change in beliefs about language learning on the part of both learner and teacher, as well as a parallel change in roles, and learners and teachers may need preparation (if not explicit training) to undertake self-instruction (Dickinson 1987:121; Little, foreword to Dickinson 1992). However, Hunt, Gow & Barnes see the resulting closer relationships that are possible as "a worthwhile experience for both teacher and learner" (1989:216).

3.2.1.3.7. Concerns
Despite psychological, sociological and philosophical justifications, the main problems with autonomy as a goal of education are the lack of a sound theoretical base in applied linguistics (Benson & Voller 1997:3), a lack of rigorous research, and the difficulty of discovering to what extent autonomous learners out-perform their traditionally-taught peers in the long-term (Hill 1994:214). Because of this, educators are warned by authors such as Pennycook (1997) and Dickinson (1987) to take a gradualist approach:

after humanist and communicative language learning, there is now an even more libertarian and democratic educational approach: autonomous language learning [which] needs to proceed with far more humility, sensitivity and caution than is often the case when the supposedly new and best ideas that flow from the applied linguistic centres are vigorously marketed around the world. (Pennycook 1997:44)

Other current concerns regarding the promotion of learner autonomy in the second language classroom can be classified under three headings: i) pedagogical; ii) cultural; and iii) political, and are presented in tabular form below (table XIV).   

TABLE XIV: PEDAGOGICAL, CULTURAL AND POLITICAL CONCERNS RELATING TO THE PROMOTION OF LEARNER AUTONOMY. 

Though these issues (above) remain current, Gremmo (1995:154) points out that early logistic criticisms of autonomy have since been answered satisfactorily. These claimed that self-direction could not happen: a) with children; b) with some ‘difficult' languages; c) in institutions whose courses were exam-driven; and d) with adults of low educational level:

a)      children: Dam (cited in Gremmo 1995:154) has shown that children benefit from a ‘learning to learn' approach, their learning competence is higher than children who have been taught, and their achievement is the same;

b)      ‘difficult' languages: The Language Centre in Cambridge offers self-directed learning for more than 40 languages (Harding & Tealby 198). The University of Pamplona is setting up a resource centre for the learning of Basque; the Linguistics Institute of Ireland is developing a self-directed approach for Gaelic (both popularly seen as extremely "difficult" languages) (Gremmo 1995:154);

c)      examinations: Experiments with self-direction have led to a reappraisal of the concept of "examination". In France, the Instituts Universitaires de Professionalisation (IUPs) are recommending the establishment of self-directed learning schemes with resource centres as meeting their learner's needs (Gremmo 1995:154);

d)      adults: The Australian Migrant Institute (AMES) has adopted a self-directed approach to working with migrants, many of them boat-people with low or no formal education, with satisfactory results (Willing 1981; Race 1985). In Norway the "Strengthening the Second Foreign Language" (Styrking ac det andre fremmedspraket I grunnskolen) project has found that a self-directed approach helps learners who are considered slow or below average to become more efficient. These have been shown to fare better with their second "difficult" foreign language (French or German) in self-direction than they had with their "easy" first foreign language (English), taught in a traditional classroom mode (Gremmo 1995:154).

Nunan (1997) addresses a more basic concern voiced by Johnston: "there is a very powerful assumption in this approach to learning that the learner knows what is best" (1985:192, cited in Nunan 1997:194), and argues that most learners at the beginning of the learning process do not know what is best: "It is the function of the materials augmentation ... to develop skills and knowledge in learners which ultimately will leave them in a position where they do know what is best" (Nunan 1997:194). Finally, we need to heed Pennycook's warning that:

to encourage ‘learner autonomy' universally, without first becoming acutely aware of the social, cultural and political context in which one is working, may lead at best to inappropriate pedagogies and at worst to cultural impositions. (Pennycook 1997: 44)

3.2.1.3.8. Conclusions
Writing quite early in the history of the study of autonomy in second language learning, Holec sees the prime objective of language teaching as helping the learner "acquire the linguistic and communicative abilities he has defined for himself" (1980:28) (cf. Nunan 1996:14; Sinclair 1996:150; Brooks & Grundy [Eds.] 1988), a subsidiary aim being to enable the learner to acquire autonomy by him/herself (cf. Trim 1976; Voller 1997). In this view, autonomous action "is an act of learning, and not of teaching, done by the learner and not the teacher. This reversal of the educational situation poles involves redefining all the functional components of that situation" (Holec 1980:40). Fifteen years later, Gremmo (1995) observes that work in the 1980's and 1990's has shown autonomous learning to be a fruitful approach in all aspects of language learning theory and practice, and in all parts of the world, and Cotterall (in the same year) reports favourably on an experiment with a course-wide strategy for fostering autonomy, drawing a number of conclusions:

1. autonomy in language learning is desirable;

2. dialogue is more important to autonomy than structures;

3. the relationship between the learner and the class teacher is central to the fostering of autonomy (cf. Holec 1980);

4. autonomy has implications for the entire curriculum;

5. a vocabulary of language learning shared by all participants is required;

6. time must be made available within programmes for teachers and learners to engage in dialogue about the learning process;

7.  teacher education programmes need to incorporate practice in the skills required for management of the learning dialogue (cf. Little 1995) (Cotterall 1995:226).

 For Kenny (1993) and Little (1993; 1996), autonomy implies a wider perspective of holistic education, in which learners are encouraged to value their own opinions as well as taking on responsibility for learning. This approach is independent of pedagogic styles, organisational models, student age, or learning environment, and goes beyond subject disciplines, being a defining characteristic of education (cf. Gremmo 1995:161; Little 1996a; Riley 1993):

... it can be said that only when autonomy is being allowed to function is education taking place at all. For where autonomy is repressed or ignored - in other words where the learner has no say and no being - then what we have is not education but some sort of conditioning procedure; the imposition and reinforcement of dominant opinion. But education as an emancipatory agent empowers a person's autonomy, which allows new interpretations of the world and the possibility of change. (Kenny 1993:440)

A number of authors address the issue of whether motivation (resulting from autonomous learning) produces successful learning, or vice versa (Ellis 1985b:119). Littlejohn (1983:607) finds that increased learner involvement in course management can improve depth of learning, motivation, and attitude toward studying (cf. Skehan 1989), but that the learner's prior experience and expectations often make it difficult to introduce such a learner-centred approach. Wang & Palincsar (1989) (cited in Dickinson 1995:172) assert that accepting responsibility for learning successes and failures enhances self-perception of competence, and so enhances motivation (cf. Harter & Connell 1984). Deci & Ryan (1985, cited in Dickinson 1995:170) and Dweck (1986) find that offering rewards (grades, gold stars, peer/teacher acclaim, tests) to learners can reduce intrinsic motivation and learning stability. Thus, in order to develop and enhance productive motivation, learners need systems which "incorporate challenge, and even failure, within a learning-orientated context" (Dweck 1986:1046). Beach (1974) reports that small-group independent study can lead to increased motivation to learn and to "an increased ability to apply principles studied" (1974:198), with tutorless groups scoring higher in a final achievement test than tutor-led control groups (cf. Faw [cited in Rogers 1969]; Hovey 1973; Webb & Grib 1967). Beach also states that tutorless groups showed "increased interpersonal skills, sense of responsibility for one's growth and learning, improvements in critical thinking and lasting curiosity aroused by the learning" (1974:198).

Autonomy in the classroom can be presented as a continuum (Nunan 1996; Dickenson 1987), depending on the personality of the learners, their goals, the philosophy of the institution, and the cultural context (cf. figure 8, below):

FIGURE 8: AN AUTONOMY CONTINUUM (DICKINSON 1987:10).

Teachers are important in the process of fostering autonomy, and the success of attempts to empower learners to become actively involved in their own learning depends to a large extent on them (Hill 1994:214) (cf. Little [foreword to Dickinson 1992]; 1995), and on their own ability to reflect on redefinition of roles. The process of promoting learner autonomy and the realisation of individual potential however "requires that teachers also accept that learner autonomy cannot be forced." (Sinclair 1996:150). Kelly (1996) and Sinclair (1996) identify the importance of a counselling role for teachers, functioning as persons rather than practitioners, making the point that such skills need to be consciously learned and consciously applied, on the way to "becoming more effectively genuine, understanding and respectful with our students, and in order to help them become self-directed, self-responsible learners. Developing skills in language counselling enlarges our competence as language educators" (Kelly 1996:112).

Several authors have emphasised the need for caution and a gradualist approach (Hill 1994:214), investigating whether there is any evidence that the active involvement of the learner in the learning process has any effect on learning outcomes (cf. Allwright 1981:11). O'Neill stresses the importance of doing "ordinary things" well (O'Neill 1991: 300-1), and Pennycook (1997:53) sees a need to take into account the cultural contexts of the language learners, above and beyond the more specific development of strategies for self-directed learning, or the un-aided use of a self-access centre. Nunan (1996:13) and others (e.g. Oxford 1990b; Sinclair & Ellis 1992) however, stress the need for learners to be "systematically educated in the skills and knowledge they will need in order to make informed choices about what they want to learn and how they want to learn" (Nunan 1996:13), claiming that a degree of autonomy can be fostered in any learners and in any learning environment.

Brooks & Grundy (Eds.) (1988) see it as "axiomatic that learner autonomy should be the goal of every learner and every teacher" (1988:1), while Little observes that "genuinely successful learners have always been autonomous", and that educators must "help more learners to succeed" rather than following learner autonomy as an explicit goal (1995:175). Thus, while autonomy has a special place in realising goals and principles of a holistic view of language learning as education, it must still be evaluated by its effectiveness in enabling learners to learn the foreign language (Dickinson 1987:2), which is their immediate aim.

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