I think that learning autonomy depends of learners, teachers or the system teaching situation. Learners’ autonomy has freedom to decide their lessons and exercises in the classroom. The teaching practices are flexible, and therefore learning autonomy is practicable and achievable.
Some students get to prepare themselves for improving their knowledge, they study very hard, and have to make a big effort to get the goals, so that they read magazines, newspapers and books in English, listening to radio, and watching TV programs or movies, listen to music; in other words they create their own methods and encourage by the learning English process.
Nowadays, the learning autonomy is easier, because there are many alternatives to learn alone, one of them is using-technology which has many websites and fantastic URLs. In addition, it is easy to get a computer, internet services or the famous Blackberry cell phones, so that with a good motivation they have the opportunity to learn very well and according the necessity in the modern society.
It was beautiful finding many alternatives for our class especially 7 Categories for Classroom Computer by Donna Ashmus, which involve many options for teachers and students that I would like to use with my students like: oral reports, show multimedia projects, Station communication, E-mail other students/classrooms, Quick Cam to take pictures of students or communicate face to face, use CD-ROM encyclopedia for research, pictures, video and sound clips, etc. Use Internet to access libraries, projects, databases, addresses, etc. Publish tools such as: monthly class magazine, newsletter, anthologies, classroom journal, ongoing story center, brochure for project, web publishing. Simulation center: work teams of students, complete worksheet as they work through the program, and students make prediction.
Then, I think this is our responsibility be able to teach, but using the appropriate methodology according to the science and technology.
Hello Jenny,
ResponderEliminarI was reading your post about learner autonomy and I mostly agree with you.
To give freedom to students and teachers in class means to allow kind of flexibility to choose any activity or lesson, which bring benefits to the learning process.
With a good environment and obviously with a good relationship, students become active actors of their own learning. They are not forced to follow strict rules or unuseful and difficult tasks.
I also agree that nowadays there are lots of good resources to reinforce the language acquisition in class.
Best regards,
Santiago