Autonomous Learners and Young Learners

Much evidence reveals that learner autonomy benefits learners learning, especially in adult learners and even adolescents. If young learners in elementary school phase could benefit from learner autonomy, it would facilitate their future language learning. Before the discussion of literature related to young autonomous learners, a review of characteristics of autonomous learners is presented.

Candy (1991) provided a list of 100 characteristics under 13 headings. The headings are presented below.

• be methodical and disciplined

• be logical and analytical

• be reflective and self-aware

• demonstrate curiosity, openness and motivation

• be flexible

• be interdependent and interpersonally competent

• be persistent and responsible

• be venturesome and creative

• show confidence and have a positive self-concept

• be independent and self-sufficient

• have developed information seeking and retrieval skills

• have knowledge about, and skill at, learning processes

• develop and use criteria for evaluating (pp. 459-466)

In language learning field, Dickinson (1993) identified four autonomous learner characteristics. She observed that autonomous learners can identify what is taught, set their learning goals, utilize and monitor suitable learning strategies, and self-assess their own learning. Breen and Mann (1997) described eight qualities of being autonomous:

the person’s stance towards the world, their sense of self, their metacognitive capacity, their management of change, their independence from educational process, their strategic engagement with learning, and their capacity to negotiate. The authors also proposed a general evolution of autonomy in the classroom. A learner may experience three phases of development: (1) Dependent or Counter dependent, (2) Independent or Individualistic, and (3) Interdependent. It is a process from relying others to collaboration. The development of autonomy, however, is not a static process. Breen and Mann (1997) proposed the three phases only to map out the possibilities. They considered in reality it is a rather dynamic and complicated situation. Each individual in the classroom may be at different phases, which may not be correspondent with the phase of the current classroom group. At different times, individuals may even revert to the previous phase.

Elementary school students’ autonomous behaviors and how their autonomy develop in the process is seldom researched. Wawrzyniak-Śliwska (2005) provides two

explanations for the lack of research. First, autonomous learning involves cognitive and metacognitive strategies such as setting goals and monitoring oneself, which may be too difficult for children. Second, teachers may be suspicious of passing the control to young learners. In the project, a group of six to seven-year-old learners participated in the English courses that were integrated with principles of learner autonomy. The courses included elements of learner goals, tasks and materials, learner choice, teacher support, peer support, and reflection on learning. The observation and description of the course suggested that learners as young as six or seven years old were able to take some responsibility in their own learning under friendly, supportive conditions.

Children who were able to formulate their learning goals and reflect on their learning were also students with better scores. Dickinson (1993) states that although autonomy is more often associated with adults, it actually crosses over different ages. From her observation, young learners are even more autonomous, “The most autonomous learners that I’m aware of are small children, who are obviously learning about themselves and about the world” (p.331).

Existing research related to young learner autonomy is mostly under the keyword “self-access language learning” (Kim, 2011; Park, 2015; Teng & He, 2015).

Except Kim (2011), the other two studies are from a special issue on young learners in Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal in 2015. Park (2015) illustrates a case study of

a five-year-old Korean-English learner and how she actively engaged in English storybooks activities at home. The aim was to investigate how young English language learners make decisions that affect their language learning. Data collection included video recordings, audio recordings, pictures of artifacts, and the researcher’s journal.

The researcher found that the learner chose her own reading material, made decisions on recording, what play to do, and she even suggested to use an audio recording App

on the smartphone to record. Teng and He (2015) investigated fifth-grade Chinese-English learners’ autonomous behaviors in a project using flashcards to learn Chinese-English outside of the classroom. The study was to demonstrate an example of using flashcards to promote learner autonomy. Students selected their own words to learn, chose what related information to put on the flashcards as their personal notes, and used flashcards to monitor and evaluate their vocabulary learning. The students were interviewed at the end of the course to collect their reflection on creating flashcards and autonomous learning. The data sources included different notes the students put on the flashcards and the interviews. Results showed that given instructions and choices for how to create their own flashcards, students were able to use different note-taking strategies.

The previous two studies used traditional resources. In Kim (2011), the self-access language learning materials were self-accessed through an English center with technology equipment. The author conducted the study on two fifth-grade Korean-English learners, and illustrated how their autonomy changed during the activities. The site is a self-access language learning center, and the program consists of three stages:

(1) Awareness raising, (2) Learner training, and (3) Individual learning. The first two stages are especially important. Learners need support to realize the importance of autonomy. Learner development, training learners to learn how to learn, is thus essential in fostering learner autonomy, especially to young learners. Autonomous learning, therefore, does not mean independent learning, where learners solely rely on themselves.

Teachers play an important role in fostering learner autonomy (Little, 1995). With qualitative methodology, the author collected data through survey, observation, research journals/student reports, and counseling. The data was analyzed by comparing the emerging codes and labels from the data with the traits of autonomous learners from Breen and Mann (1997) and Candy (1981). At the end of the one-month project, the

researcher found that participants had demonstrated some behaviors of increased learner autonomy, such as being aware of their own learning styles, setting their personal goals, and reflecting on their own learning.

As Teng and He (2015) stated, “Training young learners to think for themselves is an essential skill. Thus it is never too early to introduce autonomy” (p.382). These studies show that autonomous learning exists not only in adults and adolescent learners, but also in young learners. Not much MALL research has been made in terms of young learner autonomy. More effort should be made in the field of MALL, since it includes affordances for facilitating learner autonomy.