Why
is learner autonomy a good idea?
by Jeremy Harmer
In
a normal week's classes (anything from two to five hours'
lesson time) it is almost impossible to address the needs
of every individual student. Indeed, unless our students
are prepared to take some responsibility for learning themselves,
there just isn't time to teach everything - even if we believed
that teaching was simply a matter of transmitting knowledge.
But we don't believe that. We think that students are involved
in a process of learning and acquisition, of study and practice,
of trial and error, of competence and performance. We believe
that learning is what matters. Teaching is just a way of
helping it along.
If
this is the case, then one of the most important things
a teacher can do is to help students learn better, more
effectively. Some of our time, therefore, should not just
be spent in helping pupils to understand grammar and vocabulary,
or only in teaching them to use a whole variety of lexical
phrases, or in helping them to write, using appropriate
text construction; on the contrary, some of our time should
be spent in training our students to use a range of learning
strategies they might not previously have thought of. Such
learner training will help them become autonomous so that
they can learn on their own. This means that they can work
on their English even when they are not in class. If they
are truly autonomous they can go on improving even when
they are unable, for whatever reason, to go to classes at
all.
Training
students to be autonomous is, in the view of some teachers,
even more important than teaching the language itself.
How
can we promote learner autonomy?
Learner
Autonomy - desirable, possible, or just a waste of time?
Find
out more by downloading our Learner
Autonomy Development Pack with articles, extracts from
published books and tasks.
Subscribe
now to access the packs and join the online discussions.
Look
through our Learner Autonomy bibliography
– have we missed anything off the list? What do you
think? Search our other bibliographies
and send in your comments about
them.
