Why is learner autonomy important?
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.
http://www.eltforum.com/topic1_jhviews.html
Why is learner autonomy important?
- The principle of learner involvement
- The principle of learner reflection
- The principle of appropriate target language use
If learners are reflectively engaged in planning, monitoring and evaluating their learning, their learning should be more successful than otherwise (when we know what we are doing we do it better). In this way they can use the knowledge and skills acquired in the classroom in the world beyond.
http://www.eltam.org.mk/admin/newsletter/upload/1_ELTAM_5_fin_A4.pdf
