26/01/2011 – Another great #ELTchat – Ways to develop learner autonomy – tips for learning outside class time.

“I never teach my students. I simply provide the situations in which they can learn.” Einstein

Main goals:
• Make your students independent of the teacher
• Help the learner to become independent and become his/her own mentor
• provide students with the tools to be able to learn on their own
• make your students part of the decision making about classroom activities

The role of teacher in developing learner autonomy:
• model role
• moderator
• facilitator

How autonomy starts in classroom:
• Give them choice
• Show them ways of learning
• Use the learners’ interest
• Talk about it in classroom

Here are the tips:
• show them how to learn (teach them also study skills), what suits them most and how to get most out of it
• Show learners ideas from your own learning (writing coloured words on papers, putting them on the walls). You can be a good role model for your students.
• suggest websites, radio stations anything that could be interesting and can motivate them to use these things outside classroom
• Films – discuss the films in classroom, watch film with/without subtitles, watch film in L1 and then in L2.
• Give them mLearning tech and tools
• Show them how to do things on the blog which they do at home (toondoo, embedding youtube,
• etc. ), create class blogs, yahoogroups
• Have your students set the objectives and then have them evaluate their progress
• Give them tools like spidergrams, guessing from context, train dictionary use
• Use student-generated content, peer pressure/role modeling
• Use self-access box in your classroom
• Do not let your course book limit you in developing learner autonomy – enrich, adapt, enliven it
• Tell your students about multitasking – learn while doing something else
• Show them the ways they can use course book at home (transcripts, grammar pages…)
• never do anything that you can get students to do
• Make your students think about why you do some activities in classroom, help them to become aware of the purpose
• Show them how they can use target language outside the classroom (where they can find it)
• Students’ diaries/journals/audio diaries
• Give them feedback (more than correction)
• Be careful with homework – think how to present it (rather search/project/task like than exercise or a worksheet to fill in)
• Use readers, classroom library
• Encourage your students to make friends with other people using English for communication
• Record your students…and their progress
• Encourage students to use Google Docs as their online vocabulary notebooks
• Ask them to teach (what they have learned) someone else, family members, friends…
• Persuade your students to use their mobiles in English for a week or so… (switch to English where you can)

Useful web applications:
• Voicethread
• Vocaroo
• wikis
• Tutorials (http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com, http://technology4kids.pbworks.com/w/page/34922427/tutorials)
• Moodle
• Audio boo

Further reading/activities on Learners’ Autonomy:

o lecture by Leni Dam on learner autonomy – http://tinyurl.com/6kptuek
o 40 odd websites to learn outside the classroom – http://bit.ly/ij78i2
o A lesson by @sabridv where students take over the teaching for a day – http://bit.ly/gOuNa7
o http://archive.ecml.at/mtp2/Elp_tt/Results/DM_layout/00_10/06/06%20Supplementary%20text.pdf
o http://iteslj.org/Articles/Thanasoulas-Autonomy.html
o I have also blogged about the stuff related to learners’ autonomy so if you are interested you can find it here: http://vladimiramichalkova.edublogs.org/2010/12/05/confidence-in-classroom/
o http://vladimiramichalkova.edublogs.org/2010/02/26/looking-for-motivation-outside-the-classroom/
o Learner Autonomy – a guide to developing learner responsibility (Agota Scharle and Anita Szabo), Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers
o Holec, one of the main sources of inspiration for LA http://tinyurl.com/6kerkl4
o some free books with audio recordings on http://bit.ly/7VlZnZ

Thanks for great, inspiring and motivational #ELTchat. You can join the chat on Twitter every Wednesday!