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Learner Autonomy

Speaker: Gill Sturtridge
Moderator: Robert Campbell (iT's Magazine)
Date: Thursday 2 December 1999

Gill Sturtridge graduated from Leeds University and did postgraduate work at the universities of London and Essex. She taught EFL and lectured in teacher training in numerous countries including Egypt, Sweden, China, Brazil, Mexico and Vietnam. Her research interests were the use of media, simulations, and learning strategies. She wrote a large number of teaching materials, including Listening Links and Reading Links.

"Teaching must also help the learner acquire autonomy for himself" (Holec, Council of Europe, 1981)
What are the implications of this for learner and teacher? To what extent do currently-available materials help teachers shift to a more learner-centred approach? How can we organise a more individualised approach in a classroom situation? In this chat Gill Sturtridge, who has devoted a significant part of her academic career to this aspect of language learning, talks about the issues.

MODERATOR> Welcome to the last richmondpark event of 1999. We're very happy to have Gill Sturtridge with us this evening to talk about learner autonomy. Good evening, Gill!

SPEAKER_Gill Sturtridge> Hello everyone.

MODERATOR> Where are you this evening?

SPEAKER_Gill Sturtridge> I'm in the University's language learning self access centre.

MODERATOR> Perhaps we could start with this question sent in earlier today: How do you help learners to be more independent?

SPEAKER_Gill Sturtridge> I'd first encourage students to think about their own learning. Vocab is an obvious way in by asking them how they remembered a word. By picture or place where they learned it and so on. This shows the class that all learners are different. Then there are many more opportunities to make them aware of how they learned something themselves. Examples if you'd like them.

MODERATOR> Yes please!

SPEAKER_Gill Sturtridge> OK. If they make a written correction ask them why they decided to change what they'd written. These decisions we make are very fast and difficult to retrieve but monitoring them is important. It is important to get learners to be able to reject all their earlier guesses. We should try to help learners reject poor guesses by recognising why their correct guesses are correct. It's not easy to remember what made you change your mind about something. Sometimes it's your own monitor saying "no" that's the wrong tense" and you self-correct.

Park Warden> That's great for adults in small groups, but what about younger learners in larger groups?

SPEAKER_Gill Sturtridge> OK for learners in large groups too. You can never raise awareness for all in any class at the same time. In large classes learners learn by being surprised that X learns differently from me! There's that nice exercise in Ken Willing's book which asks you to chooses one thing from a list such as a puppet, a tape recorder, a mirror etc etc that you would want to help you learn. Different students come up with different ideas. It's the same with that old game about trying to remember an easy vocabulary list of ten words and then asking who has got all correct in the correct order and how they did it. The class us usually amazed that different learners have done it in different ways.

Jenn> But do many learners care very much that other learners learn differently from them? Aren't they more concerned with improving their OWN learning?

SPEAKER_Gill Sturtridge> Yes, of course, we are all concerned with ourselves (not selfich).. sorry, selfish, but it is the first step to thinking about yourself to see that everyone has different ways. It's a start on self-awareness.

MODERATOR> OK. Here's a question from Bob . . .

Bob> Do the current courses on CD or over the Internet using new technologies when students can study where and when they want promote more autonomous learning?

SPEAKER_Gill Sturtridge> Not necessarily. It depends on how they teach! As always. You can get CDs and Distance Learning packs and so on which are very directive and don't try to cultivate good learning strategies. Others, of course do, particularly the metacognitive strategies. The fact that you are learning from a package of some sort, without a teacher only means that you are independent as to where and when you learn unless those materials encourage you. Of course there are learners who become more independent without that help but they could be more so with help.

Jenn> But with a lot of these courses the teacher has a very background role, it's the student who chooses to study like this because they don't have time to come to class.

SPEAKER_Gill Sturtridge> I agree with Jenn that the teacher can have a background role. That happens often in SACs. However in SACs you often find learners doing really exciting independent things that they have thought up for themselves, and others not.

MODERATOR> Here's a question from Santo

santo> Hi Gill, if you could only do one thing to boost learner autonomy, what would it be?

SPEAKER_Gill Sturtridge> Hello, Santo. Difficult open question... I think I'd give him some learning materials that had lots of questions through the text. Questions like: How did you get that answer? or When you got that wrong, was it because you thought X was a (eg: boat when in fact it is a bridge). I'm thinking of a piece of SAC material with a text in it where learners often take the wrong decision and hang on to it. It's trying to teach people to reject the wrong hypothesis that is the one thing I'd try to teach them. It's not easy. Did that make sense?

MODERATOR> Any comment, Santo?

santo> Yes, coming...

Jenn> So learners need to be more open in their approach to learning?

SPEAKER_Gill Sturtridge> Jenn, I'm not sure about that word "open". I'd prefer aware. Kids sit in school for years thinking that there is only one right way to do something and in fact there are lots of different ways to get to the right answer. If that's what you mean by open ,then I agree.

MODERATOR> Here's Santo's comment!

santo> I'm particularly interested in younger learners - what special opportunities/problems do you see here?

SPEAKER_Gill Sturtridge> Santo, I think younger learners are much more exciting because no teachers have "got at them" yet. To them, everything is possible. I always quote the example of a nine year old who had to learn her 9 times tables (she was bi-lingual and behind in all her classes). She was given a walkman and a pair of roller skates for Christmas and learned her tables that way. How do you think?

santo> I presume recording them and chanting as she skated

SPEAKER_Gill Sturtridge> No, not with a recorded tape. OK, I'll have to tell you. She put on her favourite pop tape and skated up and down chanting the tables to the rhythm and keeping her own movements in time. She used the kinesthetic strategy. Would you have suggested that?

MODERATOR> Here's another question from the chat room . . .

Jenn> I'd like to know about helping strong learners in a group - what can a teacher realistically do to help them?

SPEAKER_Gill Sturtridge> Jenn, strong learners can intimidate learners as well as show them new ways of learning..

SPEAKER_Gill Sturtridge> I think with the strong learners you can make suggestions about how to learn eg: get them to record a story (if they have reached that stage) and listen to themselves and count the words or times they re-recorded. You can, only if you have time, listen to those recordings and comment or ask their peers to comment. Another way is process writing, even at the beginning stage . . . get learners to look at each other's writing (or an anonymous learner's writing) and comment on it. Even at a low level.

Jenn> Yes but that's the point, the strong learners still have needs they just exert them more and they still need to be helped - or the teacher loses them . . . their motivation goes

SPEAKER_Gill Sturtridge> Jenn, I agree, but asking them to do something different is asking them to exert themselves. Also, if you make/give them suggestions about things they can do, either in SAC if you have one, or at home, simple things like transcribing two sentences of native speakers with the answers so they can mark what they found difficult stretches them.

Jenn> OK I like those ideas - if you have the time as you say

SPEAKER_Gill Sturtridge> There are things like that in textbooks you could use.

MODERATOR> Do you think task based courses and materials help the teacher to take care of different needs and levels within one group of students.

SPEAKER_Gill Sturtridge> Again, they can do depending on how good the materials are. You can always add in different levels of activity to suit different levels of learner. They could be activities which do not have a product and where the process is actually practice. There, I've said the word practice. Why not?

MODERATOR> Gill, as we head off into the new millennium, do you think that students are likely to naturally become more autonomous?

SPEAKER_Gill Sturtridge> Yes, I think learners are more confident in their own judgement already. Particularly young ones. We have computers to thank for that because they have instilled the belief in learners that they can learn alone with the machine (or with just a little help from their friends).

MODERATOR> Any final comments from the chat room?

Park Warden> Perhaps the resources that Internet can give us will also help in autonomy

SPEAKER_Gill Sturtridge> Of course, you're right. They already have. "Look it up on the web" is really saying "Find it yourself". And that's a fantastic start. From there you can think about different ways of working for yourself.

MODERATOR> Well, thank you for coming to the park, Gill!

SPEAKER_Gill Sturtridge> Thank you for letting me in. I love the autumn colour.

MODERATOR> Autumn and autonomy. Very nice!

SPEAKER_Gill Sturtridge> Happy new Millennium everyone.