Candidate of pedagogical
sciences, U.R.Kanseitova, G.J.Hairlaeva
Kazakh State Women’s
Teacher Training University, Kazakhstan.
TERMINOLOGY AND DEFINITIONS OF
SELF-WORKING.
It is very important to form
self working in children from early times. Teacher should motivate children and
involve them into the lesson. Children must love the lesson and come to the
lessons with good expectations. Young children, if they are normal, want to
learn. “At no other time in life does the human being display such enthusiasm
for learning, for living, for finding out.” (Pluckrose 1979:27). Lifelong
attitudes appear to be formed early. If teachers can manage to capture
children’s enthusiasm and keep it by presenting well-planned lessons, right for
their needs and development level, the children they teach should make progress
and find that they are good at English. It is at this first stage of learning
English that foundations for what may be a life-long interest in English that
foundations for what may be a life-long interest in English language and
culture can be laid.
The word
“self-working” is used to refer to situations in which a learner, with others,
or alone, is working without the direct control of a teacher. This might be for
short periods within a lesson, for whole lessons, or in the extreme case of
learner autonomy, where he undertakes the whole of his learning without the
help of teacher.
Self-working is concerned with responsibility in
learning. Individuals who are involved in
self-working have undertaken some additional responsibility for their
own learning which in other circumstances would be held on their behalf by a
teacher. Clearly, learners can be involved in self-working to various degrees.
For some it may be total, so that no teacher is involved at all; for others –
the more likely situation – self-working will be part of a package involving
both conventional teaching and self-working.
The
main key to understanding this terminology concerns the concept of
responsibility for learning and wherein the responsibility lies. The act of
learning something must always be a personal, individual act. Traditionally,
the teacher is responsible for setting up this organization and managing it in
the classroom. Alwright (1978) has noted that the teacher is responsible for a
daunting list of management tasks, and suggests that the responsibility for at
least some of them might be shared with learners. The tasks he notes include such
things as determining goal, 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 and so on.
One view of
self-working is that in which the teacher seeks to include the learners
increasingly in this decision-making process
about their learning and the management of it; the teacher seeks to
transfer to the learners an increasing degree of responsibility for their own
learning. In this view, an autonomous learner is one who is totally responsible
for making and implementing all of the decisions concerned with his own
learning.
An
opposing view is one which the materials and resources for learning are written
and organized in such a way that the decision making and much of management of
the learning are built into the materials. In this view, the learners’
responsibility may be limited to matters concerning when the work takes place,
and perhaps which parts of the programme to work on at particular times.
-Self working. Thus is a neutral term referring
generally to situations which learners are working without the direct control
of the teacher.
-Self-direction. This term describes a particular
attitude to the learning task, where the learner accepts responsibility for all
the decisions concerned with his learning but does not necessarily undertake
the implementation of those decisions.
-Autonomy. This term describes the situation in which
the learner is totally responsible for all of the decisions concerned with his
learning and the implementation of those decisions. In full autonomy there is
no involvement of a “teacher” or an institution. And the learner is also independent
of specially prepared materials.
-Semi autonomy. This conveniently labels the stage at
which learners are preparing for autonomy.
-Self-access materials. These are materials
appropriate to and available for self working.
-Self-access learning. This is self working using
these materials. The term is neutral as to how self-directed or other-directed
the learners are.
-Individualized instruction. Once again this term is neutral as it as: “a learning process
which is adapted to a particular individual, taking this individual’s
characteristics into consideration.”
The term
self-direction is different from the others in the list in that it refers to
attitudes rather than techniques or even modes of working. Self-access
learning, or individualized instruction, for example, refer to modes of
learning in that they are concerned with the activities of the learner, the
teacher and their interaction. Self-directed learning, in contrast describes an
attitude to learning in which the learner accepts responsibility for his
learning, but he does not necessarily carry out courses of action independently
in connection with it. Consequently, a learner may be self-directed and yet
following a conventional teacher-led class; similarly a self-directed learner
may follow any one of the possible self-instructional modes. Indeed in this
latter case, the chances of the success are greatly enhanced if the learner is
self-directed; and if the self working mode is learner-centred, then
self-direction is a requirement for success.
Self-direction, then, is a second key to understanding
self working. But what does it mean to be self-directed? What does it mean to
take responsibility for one’s own learning? Self-direction refers to a
particular attitude towards learning, one in which the learner is prepared to
take responsibility for his own learning. This idea frequently strikes teachers
as impossibly idealistic and unrealistic, so it is worth examining it in
detail. In fact, outside of the context of education, we take responsibility for
a whole range of things, many of which we know little about. The first point to
be made about this, then, is to distinguish between being responsible for
something, and carrying out courses of action arising from that responsibility.
To be responsible for something does not entail having to carry out the courses
of action arising from it.
The situation
is similar with respect to self-directed learning. The self-directed learner
retains responsibility for all aspects of the management of his learning but
will probably seek expert help and advice for many of these. Even those
learning in conventional classes with highly directive teachers can retain
responsibility for their own learning in this sense, although their scope for
assisting with the management of their learning will be greatly curtailed.
A
self-directed learner, then, is one who retains responsibility for the
management of his own learning. If the learner, in addition, undertakes all
these management tasks himself, then he is also autonomous, that is, he no
longer requires help from a teacher to organize his learning. However, it is
worth noting here that many autonomous learners work with others in their
learning- autonomy does not imply isolation.
In conclusion, We want to say that self
working is very important part of teaching English. It is one kind of methods
in methodology. Nowadays this method is more used in schools.
REFERENCE
1.
Dickinson,L. 1987 “Self-instruction
in Language Learning” Cambridge
Cambridge University Press.
2.
Holec, H 1988 Autonomy and
Self-directed Learning Present Fields of Application Np Council of Europe.
3.
Jones, F R 1993 “Beyond the fringe a
framework for assessing teach yourself
materials for ab initio English-speaking learners” System 21 453-69.
4.
Jones, F R 1994 “The lone language
learner a diary study” System 22 441-54
5.
Kenny, E 1993 “For more autonomy”
System 21 431-42