Довженко О.А., Пашкова Т.С.

Сумський національний аграрний університет

Aspects of autonomous learning

Characteristics of the autonomous learner

Autonomy is an attitude to language learning which may not necessarily have many external, observable features. But, in terms of that attitude, we think of autonomous learners as people who are characterized in a number of ways. I would list about five points. First of all, it seems to me that they are able to identify what's been taught. Now that point may seem simple and self-evident, but there's been a certain amount of research done which seems to indicate that quite a lot of learners actually don't know what is going on in their classes.

Autonomous learners are aware of the teacher's objectives. Secondly, they are able to formulate their own learning objectives, not necessarily in competition with the teacher, in fact, rarely so. But more often in collaboration with the teacher, or as something which is in addition to what the teacher is doing. They are people who can and do select and implement appropriate learning strategies, often consciously. That's a third characteristic. And they can monitor their own use of learning strategies. Then, and we think this one is very important, they are able to identify strategies that are not working for them, that are not appropriate, and use others. They have a relatively rich repertoire of strategies, and have the confidence to ditch those that are not effective and try something else.

For example, in approaching a piece of reading, effective autonomous learners will go through the sorts of processes that a teacher would go through with a class. So, rather than going straight in and trying to read it and understand it immediately, they will use whatever is available in the text, ... the pictures, title, subheadings, and so on. They may, without externalizing it, set up questions for themselves about the text, will draw on their own knowledge of the world and knowledge of the topic and, in that way, use all of that contextual information to help them to understand the text.

And the final characteristic, which is very important to us, is self-assessment, in other words, monitoring their own learning. We guess that all learners involve themselves in self-assessment to some degree, but We think effective autonomous learners are consciously involved with it and recognize its importance.

Autonomy and age

It always seems to us that in relation to learning within formal educational institutions, the notion of autonomy is more easily attached to adults. Taking a much broader context, the notion of autonomy applies across the age range. The most autonomous learners that we are aware of are small children, who are obviously learning about themselves and about the world. But we realize that this risks being a flip response. However, there is work going on in education which indicates that young children with learning difficulties can be trained to become better learners.

Learner training

When we want a fuller definition, we make the point that it relates to the concept of learner autonomy, in that it aims to provide learners with the ability to take on more responsibility for their own learning. They make the useful point that ability involves both strategies and confidence.

Collaborative assessment

If we were asked to give one sentence about autonomy, we think of it as the learner being much more in control of his or her learning. One aspect of this control is I he area of assessment. For some time we have been concerned about how the learner can be involved in assessment, where assessment is for certification. We can see learner involvement very easily in formative assessment, but as soon as you move into formal certification, which is , a feature of most educational situations, the learner traditionally has no control or involvement. The relationship between the teacher or tutor and the learner is one where virtually all of the power is with the tutor. Under those circumstances, to try to get learners to take responsibility for their learning is much more difficult, because they are obviously and demonstrably not in control of this important aspect. Someone else is holding all the cards.

We pondered for some time about how one could share out the power. Here a scheme of collaborative assessment. Students are invited to assess themselves, that is, they have the option to assess their own coursework. The course is assessed through assignments. Students submit their self-assessed grade in a sealed envelope with the assignment. The tutor, having given a grade, then checks out the student's self-assessment. If the grades are different, though in fact they're often similar, the tutor invites the student to come along, talk about it, and negotiate an agreed grade according to the negotiating criteria that we use. And if the tutor is persuaded by the student's arguments for a higher grade, that grade goes forward. This gives the student real power. If the tutor is not prepared to be persuaded, they argue their respective cases according to the criteria. If they cannot reach agreement a referee marks the work, and the referee's grade is final. The student can choose the referee.

We think this procedure very successful, but more at the learner training level than as an expression of autonomy. One of the things the students need to learn is the standard of the course, particularly where students arrive from outside the UK from different academic cultures and assessment procedures. This scheme is good for learning about standards and about what the academic culture is all about, in the sense of what is and isn't valued in academic writing.