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| Opatija, The Girl with a Seagull |
Hi everybody!
I started this week considering the idea of learners authonomy contradictory. Why? I offered many reasons in my Nicenet posts, most of them springing from the fact that I mostly teach young English learners and the idea of "indipendency" given to young children is difficult.
shortly, the reasons I gave were:
- if the children are left without any guide, they wion'tt do
much of what they are expected
- it is hard to learn something when you
know you are supposed to do so; it crushes the motivation
- the children as well as the teachers, are bounded
by the curriculum first, there are subjects and topics they are supposed to
learn and we, as teachers, have the obligation to “teach“ them the mentioned; this somehow excludes indipendency.
So, my only solution of this might be to let the children
choose the way they will learn something. Their autonomy would consist in
the fact that the teacher could offer various sources on the same subject to
achieve the same goal. The teacher could also provide them with some techniques
to ease the process of learning.
To summerize, the most important that I as a teacher can do
is, try to inspire them to love the language I am teaching. I think that only
this could light the sparkle in them to pursue the knowledge on their own
outside the curriculum they are forced to follow. And to do that, boredom must
be excluded, they must be willing to participate in the class
activities that should primarily be interesting, fun and sometimes inspired by
technology.
Ivana
Ivana,
ReplyDeleteI think inspiring your learners to love the language is an excellent approach to developing autonomous learners! Further, the more you can recognize their learning styles and point those out to them, the more you are aiding them in knowing how they learn. Knowing how we best learn is key in developing true learner autonomy; this goes hand in hand with increasing metacognitive awareness.
If you ever have students working in pairs and/or small groups and they have to identify a role that they are going to play in the group; one student becomes the leader, one student writes things down, another student draws pictures to represent something, you can allow them freedom of choice in identifying these roles, thus increasing their learner autonomy. They are choosing the roles because they feel strength in that area; there is a strong connection to learning styles with these choices. Allow them to make these types of choices, to identify and hone in on their strengths. Simply pointing out how someone appears to learn, gives them great insight into themselves. Though your learners are young, I think this would be of great value to them.
Keeping students interested, motivated, and as you said, inspiring them to want to learn the language is key in this process.
Dear Ivana,
ReplyDeleteI am glad that you challenged the idea of learner autonomy. I want to get onto Nicenet to see how the rest of that discussion went. Even though I am a strong advocate of independent learning, I believe that you might be right in assuming that small children need more direction. I agree with you 100%. As you said, you can give them small tastes of autonomy by getting them involved in choosing the types of activities they use for learning, or the types of books they read too. I like Courtney's idea of getting them involved in a literature circle type of activity, such that each student has a role in the group If they choose their roles, this is getting them involved in the curriculum, and every little bit helps.
Thanks for sharing and helping us to challenge our thoughts!
Evelyn
Yes, Courtney's idea seems great. Usually when we do role plays, I give the roles to children. Actuallly, I didn't even think to give them the opportunity to choose. I usually gave more difficult roles to those who I had known had better skills. Or even when they do group or pair work, I was the one to appoint the roles. This is something I intend to change...
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