Week 7 Reflections

Hi, Everyone.

This was my favorite week so far in this class.  We discussed one of my favorite buzzwords in teaching these days – learner autonomy.  After spending the entire fall semester of Professional Development workshops on learner autonomy and independent learning, I was glad to hear from my classmates in this course about how they try to incorporate autonomy into their classrooms.  It was also interesting to think of the connections between autonomy and a one-computer classroom.

We read the article by Thanasoulas which talked about the “radical change in the age-old distribution of power and authority that used to plague the traditional classroom”- mainly what learner autonomy is and how to foster autonomy in our students. What I liked most about this article was the concise list on page 2 about the main characteristics of autonomous learners (and how I see myself as an autonomous life-life learner):

1.        Those who know their learning style (for me, I am a strong kinesthetic type)

2.       Those who take an active approach to learner (I am active enough to see out classes like this)

3.       Those who are willing to take risks (like with language learning, trying to use the new language in different situations)

4.       Those who are good guessers (language teachers have to be good guessers in order to understand their teachers)

5.       Those who focus on content (as long as I accomplish my goal, I don’t focus on how I get there)

6.       Those who don’t use a lot of transfer in learning a new language (L1 transfer does not work well for me)

7.       Those who are tolerant to the new language (I at least try to be)

Thanasaoulas spoke of the role of motivation, which is the most important element of learner autonomy.  I recently did a paper on the main effects on intercultural communication, and I found that motivation, anxiety, self-esteem, culture and gender affect intercultural communication (ICC) the most.  However, among the five themes, motivation seems to have the strongest hold, not only with ICC but also with independent learning (IL).

I also like the think-aloud self reports which he wrote about.  This introspection gets to the heart of how learners feel while they are learning. I used this type of self-report in the form of Language Learning Histories in the ICC research I discussed above. 

I also liked the article we read by Richard Smith on Learner Autonomy Teacher Autonomy.  Smith stressed that teachers must be made autonomous in order for them to promote learner autonomy. I spoke about this trickle-down effect in my Nicenet post about how I encourage teacher autonomy for my faculty.  I also like how Smith questioned whether autonomy is applicable to all cultures – for example, Asian cultures, like where he worked in Japan. This is a key discussing in autonomy these days. Sheu talked about his experiences in Taiwan in relation to this cultural application of autonomy.  While I believe it is true that Asians may not have much autonomy in K-12, I think by university many teachers are making a movement to increase the awareness of the importance of learner autonomy.

I also enjoyed reading about 7 Categories of Classroom Computer Use, Strategies and Applications for the One Computer Classroom, and How to Thrive – not just survive – in a One-Computer Classroom. However, I found most of those articles to be outdated and not really applicable to young adults at the university level, where students are more familiar with technology than the teachers are!  These would offer more help to small children, in my opinion.  On the contrary, Deborah Healey’s Technology Tip was very helpful. I will post that on my class Moodle site for students to reference.  I also have bookmarked 25 Ways to Integrate the Internet.

As I mentioned on Nicenet, I am currently in the process of developing an Independent Learning Centre (ILC) at my college.  Because of the struggles of motivation for students to attend the ILC in their spare time, I wonder how to make a good ILC and to make it popular – a fun place where students can enjoy learning. I got some good tips from the readings this week, such as Creating a Computer Lab for English Language Teaching and Self Access.  I also picked up a good technology – a wallwisher.  

Here are some photos from the Macau Grand Prix which started today - one of the highlights of Macau. I skipped out on a half day at work to enjoy the qualifying races with my son! 

Hope that everyone is having a great week!

Evelyn