Control as a Natural attribute of Learning.
To what extent are we born self-directed Ls? Thomson says that as young children, we are take control over the learning of our L1, but as learning becomes more complex we appear to give up much of our autonomy. When we learn foreign langs as teenagers or adults, we seem to find self-dir learning difficult and even show a preference for direction by Ts and learning materials.
Self-Instruction: Jones defines it as a deliberate long-term learning project...
The Grammar of Discourse
The fact that we have grammatical options helps us negociate social relationships. We can choose certain grammar structures over others to express our attitudes, to allocate power, & to establish & maintain our identities, among other things.
Understanding the choices that people exercise helps us interpret the intentions of others. There are several other areas of choice in grammar that need to be considered in order to fully explicate appropriateness in the use...
The 3 Dimensions Applied to Language in Communication
Form: Phonology / Graphology / Semiology, morphology, syntax --------- Accuracy-------------HOW IS THE UNIT FORMED?
The forms of a lang consists of the visible or audible units: sounds, written symbols, inflectional morphemes, functions words & syntactic structures.
Meaning: Semantics-------------- WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Semantics is the study of meaning potential encoded in lang. This is what we would learn about a particular form if we...
Talking Shop: Aspects of Autonomous Learning. An Interview with Leslie Dickinson
Who is the interviewer?
Tricia Hedge, a Senior Lecturer at Nottingham Univ. Since 1972 she has taught sts and ts in univs in Sweden, Japan and UK on a wide variety of programmes: Eng for Academic Purposes, Eng for Professional Purposes, and both pre-service and in-service education. Tricia is the author of Teaching and Learning in the Lang Classroom and Resource Books for Ts: Writing, She is also co-editor of Power,
...Why the ROAD TO AUTONOMY/ Is there a dead end? In order for sts to become more conscious of their own learning, ts should guide and raise their awareness. They need to be encouraged to consider and discover the factors which are influential in lang learning. In order to accomplish this, T and STS should embark on a discovery journey, in which the T leads LS to help them reach autonomy. Undeniably, there may not be a final destination at all, in the shape of complete autonomy, as most STS will...
Self-Access Language Learning 1996 - Newsletter of the Hong Kong Association for Self-Access Learning & Development.
Self-Access & Collaborative Learning:
In Hong Kong there is the highest concentration of self-access lang learning facilities in the world. Within this concentration there is diversity on whether facilities cater for individual or collaborative work. The individual group dimension of self-access fits in with some preoccupations in lang learning theory, namely, individualization
...Self-Access Lang Learning 1996 - A report by Sara Cotterall who visited 6 tertiary institutions to boost the effectiveness of existing resources for the teaching of langs.
Objectives: Visit the independent lang centers of a number of tertiary institutions in Europe and Asia.
Aims: To inspect the physical layout, resources and facilities of the various centers; / To discuss with staff their experience of managing their center in order to identify the features contributing to efficient and productive...
Activities which train strategies and equip LS to be active
Training cognitive strategies:
aim to increase STS´ knowledge of useful ways to learn and develop the strategies they need. These activities will replace the techniques which LS previously expected to come from the TS. E.g.: Instead of expecting the T to explain the meanings of new words, STS can be trained to go through a series of techniques such as using clues in the text to guess meaning, using knowledge of affixation, and checking...
What insights can we gain from educational thinking on autonomous learning?
Another idea about learner autonomy in ELT circles has been educational thinking, where the concept of self-determination has been the focus of debate for many years. "Self-determination" suggests that the individual L can reflect, make choices, and arrive at personally constructed decisions. Barrow and Woods describe it as involving the ·notion of thinking in the sense of reflecting, calculating, memorizing, predicting,...