Language Learning and the Autonomous Learner

Articles by Healey and Thanasoulas

Autonomous learning, simply stated, is when the student has both "the willingness and capacity to control or oversee his own learning (Thanasoulas, 2005)." A learner is autonomous when his is independently able to choose his own purposes for learning and to set the goals as well as select and organize the materials and the learning methods.

Thanasoulas organizes key learning strategies for the autonomous language learner; cognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies.
The cognitive strategies include:

• repetition of other's speech
• resourcing
• translation
• note-taking
• inferencing
• questioning for clarification

Metacognitive strategies are crucial to the autonomous learner. These strategies are "skills for planning, monitoring, and evaluating the learning activity." These include:

• focusing directed attention
• self-monitoring
• self-evaluation
• self-reinforcement

Healey discusses that a problem frequently mentioned for autonomous learners is that they can become discouraged because they cannot see the progress made and find the amount of learning still needed to be daunting. Learners who possess, or are taught, these strategies will be equipped to see the progress.

Healey lists some important characteristics of the autonomous learner. The first is self-motivation. She points out that for learners to become autonomous they have "to want greater responsibility for their own learning. " Thanasoulas quotes Taron and Yule who include the role of self-esteem in the level of the learners' motivation. They say that"self-esteem and desire to learn are deemed to be the most crucial factors in the learner's ability to overcome occasional setbacks. . . in the process of learning a second language." Secondly, she lists independent style. These are people who are independently capable of organizing their own learning, but also know when to ask for help.

Reading Reflections~ Week 8

Critical Issues:
Professional Development
(article by Philip Hubbard)

For the language teacher, regular professional development is necessary if he or she is to stay current in the field of computer assisted language learning (CALL). Hubbard gives three reasons for this:

1) Teachers were insufficiently trained in this area when they were first trained (presumably at the university level).
2) Both software and hardware are changing so quickly that if you don’t keep up, quickly your knowledge is out-of-date.
3) Both technology and support can be quite varied between schools (and school districts,states, and in our cases, countries!)

All of this to say, if a teacher wants to stay current in the field of CALL, it will take effort, essentially on the part of the individual teacher to find the appropriate professional development.

I found two things mentioned by Hubbard to be quite ironic. First of all, he stated that in a directory of job listings for ESOL teachers on a TESOL website, the majority of listings either specified a requirement of CALL proficiency or at least mentioned it. Obviously, it is becoming increasingly important for the ESOL teacher to have some expertise in computer assisted language learning. The irony followed on the next page when he stated that “for many teacher preparation programs the position seems to be that a teacher does not need to know anything about computers” (p.279). This astounded me. I graduated from university, in a teacher preparation program, twelve years ago. As a student in the early 90’s, we were given virtually no training on computer use as a student or as a teacher. Since over a decade has passed, I would have assumed that much had changed in this area of teacher training. Since it is important to those who are hiring ESOL teachers that the teachers be capable in the area of CALL, it needs to be a priority at the collegiate level to provide appropriate pre-service training.

The good news for me, and my fellow classmates of L530 CALL, is that we are doing the necessary professional development to help us be knowledgeable and marketable. But the rest of the story I believe, is that if we want to remain competent in this area, it will take a conscious and consistent effort on our part to remain so.

Hubbard stated that “motivation will perhaps best emerge from engaging in a project relevant to your local teaching context.” I heartily agree with this. Anything that is learned and then applied and used in the classroom immediately will be much more useful, and in the end, of greater value.

Website Evaluation #2

Software/Website Title: Interesting Things for ESL Students
Website URL: www.ManyThings.org
Grade/Age Level: not age or grade specific

This week I reviewed the language learning website entitled, “Interesting Things for ESL Students”. This site appears to be written by two men, Charles Kelly and Lawrence Kelly, who, according to the website, are teachers at the Aichi Institute of Technology in Japan. While the purpose of this website is not stated, it seems that it is intended to be used as a tool to improve and practice the student's American English.

This website has many pages, covering a wide variety of English learning. These include: Vocabulary, Grammar, Sentence Patterns, Proverbs, Sayings & Idioms, Pronunciation, Listening, Hearing, Reading, Spelling, Podcasts, Songs, Jokes, Crosswords Puzzles, Tongue Twisters, a collection of easy things for beginners, and a link to Voice of America's Special English program (this is, incidentally, how I stumbled upon this website.) This site is organized well and clearly laid out. You won't get lost going through these pages. However, this is not a very attractive website. While there is something to be said for simplicity, this site is visually unappealing. I nearly “judged the book by its cover” and passed this site on by as it just did not grab me by its graphics (or lack thereof). However, on a whim I just tried one of the pages and I was instantly impressed by the activity. Since I like one, it led me to check out many of the other games and activities.

Some of the activities I liked included one on pronunciation (like listening to different words that sound quite similar to the untrained ear-- like “ferry” and “very” and then selecting which word was said) and another game under “Audio Concentration/Memory Game” which is an excellent activity for improving concentration and distinguishing between similar sounds in the English language.

Each different page does provide guides to give you the instructions on how to accomplish the activity. However, I found them to be fairly self-explanatory. Also, the menu is available in Japanese, for the Japanese ESL student. The average language learner would find this site to be interesting, if given a chance. As previously stated, it is visually uninteresting and so a student might not even give it a first chance. I think this website can be very helpful for the student who is wanting to sharpen his/her skills. It offers many opportunities to practice, offering immediate assessment on nearly every activity (telling you which answers were correct and what percentage were answered correctly) . Navigation and it's layout are simple enough to use.

The strengths of this site include a wide range of activities, supplying hours and hours of interesting ways the student can practice to improve listening, reading, spelling, understanding idioms and slang, etc. Another strength could possibly be the lack of graphics. Because of this all the pages should load fairly quickly for the student, regardless of the quality of his Internet connection. But, as I stated earlier, I think this website would be greatly improved upon by seriously upgrading in the “graphic design” area. The content is high-quality, it just needs to improve its looks.

How can it be?

I thought my fellow students/teachers might find this interesting. The local language we speak here is Albanian. In the Albanian language, there is just ONE word for both teaching and learning. When I was first learning the language, I went round and round with my tutor. How can this be? Teaching and Learning are two totally different concepts! When I hear people use the word for it now, I usually know whether they mean teach or learn by the context, but occasionally it is a bit ambigous and I am left wondering, "Did he say he is learning. . .or is he teaching?"

Reading Reflection~ Week 6

Text and Task Authenticity in the EFL Classroom
by William Guariento and John Morely

“Authentic” activities is a definite buzz word in the field of education and the area of EFL is not any different. The authors present a case for using authentic materials in the language classroom that will benefit the language learning process.

As I was reading this article, my husband asked what I was reading. I told him it was about using authentic materials and activities in teaching. He asked me what is meant by “authentic”. I responded with, “Well, um, you know, um. . .real”. Realizing that this explanation didn't really cut it, I looked back to see what the authors said: “An authentic text is one 'created to fulfill some social purpose in the language community in which it was produced.” The purpose of using these authentic tasks is to “bridge the gap” between things normally learned in the language classroom and the student's ability to partake in the language in the “real world”.

In my teaching, I have noticed that it is easier to bring authentic material in to an intermediate or advanced class. The difficulty is using these texts in beginner classes. If it is authentic, often the language is just too advanced. Guariento and Morley say that it is justifiable to simplify the text , but that it is difficult to do it “seamlessly”. They also state that it is not necessary for total understanding of the text to occur; instead the students must learn to use what they gained from partial comprehension.

The authors posit that not only should the text be authentic but so must the task. They go on to outline four school of thought regarding authentic task, that authenticity come from: 1) a “genuine purpose”, 2) “real world targets”, 3) “classroom interaction” and 4) “engagement”. I think the case is strongest for the first two. When students understand the purpose and can see that this skill is both practical and necessary, learning somehow becomes easier. When learning new languages, from my own experience, I have seen that I learn most easily those things that I will need to use, and use soon. Activities and text used in the EFL classroom need to show that they are meaningful, not just for the classroom's sake , but for use on the street, in the target language.

Reading Reflections~ week 4

Anderson article:

Key ideas and reaction

In this article Anderson explores the different ways and reasons of distance education and what types of interaction are available through distance education. First he emphasized the need and importance of collaborative activity in all types of education, including distance education, and more specifically for the purposes of this course, language education. First Anderson specifies what he means by “interaction” and he defines it as “reciprocal events that require at least two objects and two actions.” He reminds us that the idea of interaction is not new, as nearly one hundred years ago, John Dewey described a internal interaction as the part of the learning process “when the student transforms the inert information passed to them from another, and constructs it into knowledge with personal application and value.”

A main idea of the article were the modes of interaction: first the three more common types( student to student, student to teacher, and student to content) and then extended to the other three types( teacher to teacher, teacher to content, and content to content). He offers his theorem of equivalency, which basically says as long as one of the three main modes of interaction is at a high level, there will be deep and meaningful learning, even if the other two are very minimal or even nonexistent. High levels of two or even three of these modes will secure a better overall learning experience.

I thought that Anderson's theorem was interesting-- that only one type of interaction is necessary for learning to occur, but when there are more forms of interaction the enjoyment increases . He stated that currently people perceive that the most valuable type of interaction is student to teacher and thus it receives the highest market value. This shows it self in the way that schools and universities advertise what there student to teacher ratio is and what the average class size is.

I agreed with his critique of the lecture format, but I had never realized the historical reason why this was the only feasible method previously, but now there are so many others. He explained that it originates from the fact that books were rarely available, often hand-scribed. It was necessary for the teacher to read aloud these things to the others. Many students here are still taught in this format, as the teacher has the information in a book or notebook and then the students are to copy it into their personal notebooks. This is because the class has no other resources, textbooks, or matierals. However, as more resources become available, the need for this type of interaction, which is minimal, can be reduced, as other effective delivery modes are given in its' place.

Peyton article:

Peyton outlined several of the challenges that come with “computer-mediated interaction”. The first results from the newness of the medium, giving the students the feeling that they are anonymous and can say anything. The dialog can then quickly degenerate into confrontation and insults. Secondly, a problem can result from the “immediacy of the medium”. Much like the first challenge, the students are thinking about what is being said but are saying things flippantly that they probably would never try to say in a regular classroom. A third challenge comes from the way the networks discussions can quickly digress and it is difficult for the teacher to establish the authority to determine the direction of the discussion. It can be difficult for the teacher to maintain the authority when students are allowed write anything at anytime I do agree with the author that , even despite these challenges, the opportunities for learning through this type of interaction are wide and varied.

To the beach!

We're vacationing this week in Greece. We're in the northern part, called Halkidiki. The water is clear and fairly warm, the skies blue and most of the tourists are gone now!
My oldest son, who is always interested in languages, trying out his name in Greek.

Website Evaluation #1

While searching specifically for a language learning blog, I came across BBC's Learning English website http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/ . The purpose of this site is to encourage and further English language learning. One aspect of this site is a blog http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/communicate/blog/ and I will discuss it more in a moment. There were many more resources on this site and I will try to highlight some of these as well.

The blog section is actually two blogs. The first is written by an English student. A new student is chosen every month from different locations around the world. The blogger posts entries frequently and then other English students are encouraged to write in and respond to the entry. The one I reviewed was written by a young Brazilian women. She wrote about her home, her family and her profession as a dentist. At the end of the month, a new blogger is chosen. The second blog is written also in response to the first blog, but this one is written by an English teacher. She writes making suggestions on how the student may improve his English skills and his writing. She even makes assignments for the student to do.

One positive element about this blog is, as it says on the website, that this blog is different from a BBC broadcast because "it's a conversation between the author and the audience." Another positive is that it is a great way for students to learn about people from all over the world and have the opportunity to communicate with them. Also, this might be a good way to introduce students to the concept of blogging.

There are many other categories on the Learning English page. One that I liked particularly is entitled Quizzes. It had a number of different types of quizzes. One is called Quiznet. Each one has six questions, with multiple choice answers. For each incorrect response, the computer explains why the right answer is correct. The quiz changes daily. Other quizzes include Crossword (with a new topical puzzle weekly), Wordmaster (practices vocabulary in a game format) The Commentary Box (students listen to conversations of different World Cup matches, then take a quiz on what they heard), and Where to Next? (requires listening to audio directions, answering correctly about the location, all without running out of cash.)

Another category of the site is Exam Skills. It has pages for building vocabulary, writing exams, listening exams, speaking exams, and reading exams. This could be a very helpful section for students, like mine, who are not accustomed to standardized testing or college entrance exams.
Yet another category is "Grammar & Vocabulary".. This section includes Moving Words (with quotes from famous people), News English (teaches words being used in the news currently), Ask About English (answers questions that are sent in—the student can either read the answer or listen to them), How To (teaches phrases and expressions for particular situations), Keep Your English Up to Date (teaches new words that probably aren't even in the dictionary yet!), and Songlines (teaches vocabulary with the lyrics of a current song).

This website will be interesting to English learners of nearly all levels. There is something to interest everyone. With topics ranging from football to music to games to news, there is sure to be something of interest.

This site is useful for writing, listening and reading. The blog will target writing and reading. Feedback on the blog will be authentic as responses are given to posts that the students write. Assessment and Feedback is also given to the learner in the "Quizzes" section.

I found this entire site attractive and easy to navigate. Its strengths include the variety of topics and activities and the ability to beneficial to learners of all levels. One weakness might be just that it has so much material, the beginner might not know where to head. It might be helpful if it was separated between beginner, intermediate and advanced exercises.

The Good and the Bad of taking a class online

I was all prepared to make an entry today saying how wonderful it is to be taking my class online, as opposed to a traditional classroom. You see this week I am on vacation with my family in Greece, in an area called Halkidiki. How else could I do my classwork while also being in such a wonderful location?!? And then I was going to upload some pictures of just how great it is and how much fun we're having! But then, the internet quit working at our rental place. So, now I am writing you from a loud, hot internet cafe. Nine-year-old boys are sitting next to me, and hovering nearby as they play Counter-Strike and yell to each other. So here I am trying to concentrate and find a language learning blog to evaluate for our assignment. So vacation is wonderful, but I am a little worried at how I will compose something coherent!

This was taken just around the corner from our apartment. This is a quite common sight-- a horse drawn trailer filled with wood for sale.

Computer Assisted Language Learning~ readings

I found the chapter by Egbert to be a good introduction to CALL. The text brought in to focus what is meant, exactly, by this term. I really had wondered, prior to the course, is there something specific meant by "Computer-Assisted Language Learning?" All of the articles read explained that this is a broad term, applying to any possible use of the computer to teach or learn a language. It also does not apply only to English learning, but to any language, across content and skill areas.

One point made by Egbert that resonated with me was this: "Educators need to avoid putting technology ahead of learning in their classrooms (p. 4) Before I moved overseas, I taught in a public school in the U.S. We were required to attend a number of seminars on technology use. Sometimes I felt that we were learning these things for technology's sake, not for the sake of better instruction. So while I am excited to learn new ways to use the computer in language teaching, I want to keep in mind that what I implement needs to improve learning.

Egbert listed eight conditions for classroom language learning. I'd like to highlight four of them.
First, he said that to prepare students for using the new language in the “real world”, they must have opportunity to practice in social settings. I am hoping to discover some ways that social settings for the classroom can be generated through computer usage.

Secondly, he discussed the use of authentic tasks in language learning. The students will be much more motivated to learn when given a task that they have the skills to accomplish, given the necessary time and support.

Thirdly, Egbert stated that language learners are trying on a “a different language and culture and possibly even a new way approaching knowledge and the learning process” (p. 7). This has definitely been my experience here! We are asking our students to think and learn in a whole new way. Their education prior to our English classes is an old style of pedagogy that reflects their former Yugoslavian roots , with the teacher at the blackboard writing down things he wants the students to copy in their notebooks-- that is, if they happened to bring a notebook! The first few sessions in our classes are spent stressing the need to bring a pen and paper. The high school students aren't even used to using a textbook in class, much less any other materials or resources. After teaching them to bring supplies, then we move to some note-taking skills. But this is just the beginning as we want them to begin to think creatively, something otherwise rarely done in the classroom.

Finally, the author emphasized that the learner should have some autonomy in the language learning process. He referred to an example where the students are helped by the teachers to define their own learning goals and then later assessing their own progress toward attaining these stated goals. This is something that I have never done with students but I am intrigued by the idea. I'd be interested in hearing from any other participants in our class who have done something like this.