Literature Review: Learning Autonomy

The teachers are considered as the foundation of knowledge when traditional classroom is considered. They decided on the learning process and the material that has to be conveyed to the students. The main purpose of the teacher was to inspire the students, design the activities in the classroom and provide feedback to them according to their performance. The teacher were considered to be the person who imparted knowledge but the teachers who are promoting the autonomous learning have a different role when compared to the traditional teaching methods. They play a role, which is more of a counselor and the facilitator who helps the student identify their own goals. They will help the students to plan their opportunities for their practice and to evaluate their progress. There are large numbers of strategies, which will help the teachers promoting the autonomous learning to convert students to this process. The crucial part of the process is that the role of the teachers and students should be identified and established for the very beginning of the process. The students should be provided with appropriate opportunities and tools so that one can practice in the classroom.  However, assuming the fact that the teachers are ready to switch their roles from the knowledge based learning system to the learning based system their responsibilities are only to facilitate the changes. The teacher have an important role in the autonomous learning system as the they are the ones who will be creating a classroom culture which will facilitate and accept the autonomy otherwise its difficult for the students to act autonomously. 

The most helpful tool for students to learn foreign language outside classroom in today’s generation is technology. Technology is evolving and improving day by day and in regards of education, as well it is being modernized. Effective language learning outside the classroom helps the students to learn foreign language by themselves (Al Asmari, 2013).  Moreover, collectively it can be said that the students those who have limited scope in learning English language outside and beyond classroom, the teachers have a big role in helping and supporting the students to learn the language with ease.

 Mostly the teachers have to be concerned about the role they are playing and they have to be very much responsible in order to maximize the students learning opportunities with technology outside and beyond classroom (Bahanshal, 2013). This research aims to explore and find out and the role and perspective of teachers and students in autonomous language learning beyond classroom in Saudi Arabian university. This report will shed light on giving recommendations, guidance, strategies and giving best advice in providing valuable learning resources that will help the students in improving their skills. This report will provide all the concepts and terms that are important in understanding the research’s purpose. The context and research significance along with research questions will be provided after that and lastly the methodology addressing the questions of the research will be explained briefly in terms of participation, collection of data and analysis of the data.

Use of technology in Autonomous learning

The father of learner autonomy is Henri Holec. In 1981, he first proposed the term learner autonomy (Benson, 2013).  Learner Autonomy is the capability and the potential of a student to take their own responsibility of  learning. Learner Autonomy is mainly the relation of the learner to the content and process of learning through psychological means (Al Asmari, 2013).  The process of language learning helps the learners to analyze the students their learning techniques and strategies. Learning autonomy improves the learners own capacities and confidence that will help them in proceeding in future.

There are several learning traits that are accustomed with autonomous learning; these traits can include learning and identifying self-goals, clearly choosing the learning materials and judging one’s own triumph (Albedaiwi , 2013). Learning autonomy is not only a fact of self-representation or creating choices of their own but it is also related with aspect of psychology that helps in improvement and development of the learner or student. Autonomous learning improves the learner’s concepts and thinking capacity as they do it by themselves without taking other external help (Benson & Voller, 2014).  Autonomous learning has been very successful therefore; many scholars of language got interested in the idea and showed their support in improving the learning process. Scholar Leslie Dickenson motivated learner autonomy where he attributed the various reasons that include teaching, objectives, learning, acquiring knowledge, motivation and urge to learn foreign language (Jeremy, 2017).

Many other researchers have the same supportive views of how important and significant autonomous learning is by explaining that autonomous learning will encourage critical awareness.  In order to learn English language the students have to develop their communicative and skills of their language, by taking into account some important points in learner autonomy that includes awareness, self–identification, giving extra attention in the process of learning and having a clear concept of the language and communication.

The students interested in autonomous learning must have own self-regulating skills and have the ability of self-learning. They should have the keenness to manage and regulate their own learning to seek more opportunities and improve their learning independently (Dierking & Fox, 2013).  The technology present today helps the students to improve their language learning skills by using the technological resources. The learners should have adaptable abilities that help the learners in dealing and confronting with challenges and difficulties by using technology to learn and analyze the language (Carter & McRae, 2014).  

The technology plays an important role in students learning the language, which is related to their own choice of language development. According to many experts and studies it has been pointed out that students often do not make complete use of the resources of technology (Richards, 2015).  The students do not utilize several existing technologies for their own benefits, moreover the students are mostly found in lagging behind the ability to find the perfect and qualitative learning resources, and they face trouble in finding the useful resources.

The most usual problem faced by the students show that they have difficulty in finding the useful resources, which can be minimized by the help of teachers. The teachers have a very significant role in developing the students by helping and supporting them in learning the autonomous language using technology (Nguyen & 2013).  A numerous amount of research has identified that there are wide range of possibilities where the teachers can help the students to maximize and improve the students’ language learning abilities using the technology outside the classroom.  The teacher can help the learner improve their skills by in-class practices where the teacher increase their student’s reading ability that will help in  language learning activities outside and beyond the classroom. Another significant way that has been found very effective for the learners that the teacher should give assignments to the student’s out-of-class topics to prepare, that will help the learners to improve their skills and improving their thinking capabilities. According to many scholars, teacher’s practice in the classroom gives a heavy impact the way students and influences them in knowing the language out of the classroom in different ways (Hamdan, 2014). The various ways includes usefulness and consciousness of  learning the language outside the classroom ,that will help the student in utilizing the technology for their language learning and providing the students useful advice on resources and also involving the students with strategies and activities (Pennington, 2014).

As it has been discussed that the teachers plays a crucial part in supporting the student in various ways in learning the autonomous language, many questions have raised that whether teachers are aware of  their roles and responsibilities that will help in learning the languages beyond the classroom (Hamdan, 2014). Many studies regarding the role of teachers have considered this as a problem but in general sense many studies have explained the viewpoint of teachers holding their roles and responsibilities of promoting autonomy in learning. Sometimes the teachers generally have lack of knowledge in some ways in contributing learner autonomy ,while at times they consider themselves as not as much responsible in taking part of the activates of students outside classroom . The differences in the perspective of both the teacher and the student of using the technology for learning outside the classroom, has clearly said that teachers participation and cooperation with the student is must and necessary (Jeremy, 2017). Therefore, it can be stated that in order to help the students in their learning of the autonomous language with technology it is vital to and have a clear idea of perspective of both the teacher and student. A study in Hong Kong has filled the gap by researching and investigating the contrasting views of the students and teachers regarding their different roles that the teachers have in supporting the student’s learning the language with technology. Many researchers used different interview techniques to carefully examine the perceptions of students and beside foreign language teachers to find out the differences between the students and teachers opinions on the point in which the involvement of the teacher and the students expectations of their estimated roles (Reeve, 2013). Students should expect the teachers to give more contributions and involvement in providing valuable information, useful resources and valuable advice. On the other hand, teachers should give their knowledge and learning materials using technology and should provide every possible help to the students. The study that is  greater investigations where the teachers roles are expected to play in other perspective having different cultural backgrounds and  other ways in understanding the other aspects that the teacher need to focus in developing the out-of-class autonomous learning (Fotos & Browne, 2013).  The study aims to expand the findings and research the aspects of the study but in a different condition, the significance and study of Saudi Arabia.

In Saudi Arabia English language learning and teaching, there are very minimum chances where the learners speak English outside the classroom. The students have a habit in them using their local or local language that is ‘Arabic’ with their family, friends and in their daily life activities, which acts a barrier in learning the English language ( Rahman & Alhaisoni, 2013). The role of teachers in some cases is seen absent in some aspects of language learning, where the learners do not get proper guidance for their assignments from the teachers. English was introduced in the late 50s in Saudi Arabia. Initially English was taught  in the intermediate and secondary school. Recently English is being taught from grade six to grade three of high school and further for two semesters in, Saudi universities. The government has realized that English is necessary in today’s world so they are making the subject mandatory in the universities and schools. The classrooms are mainly over crowded which creates problems for the teachers to manage the students.

A little research has been done in the Arabian background, which concerns the role of the teachers and their perceptions and views of autonomous language learning. Saudi Arabian university has contributed few studies in understanding the learning autonomy (Hamdan, 2014).  According to the research conducted, a survey has been done to understand the perspectives and views of teachers in regards to their attitudes and practices toward classroom learning autonomy (Rahman & Alhaisoni, 2013)..

Several university teachers were taken in the research experiment and they shared their views, outlook over the learner autonomy in the Arabian classroom (Albedaiwi, 2014).  The results of the experiment that came suggested that there is a need of improvement in the learners and engage them in the process of autonomous learning development, concentration and focus lack are the main negatives of the learners. The Arabian perspective of students and teachers viewpoint has to be improved and more involvement are expected from the teachers in using technology out-of- classroom (Tomlinson, 2014).  

The further study will closely find out the contrasting perspectives of teachers and students, to find out and differences or similarities within the perceptions. 

Participants:  as a tentative nature of study, the research and study will include a very limited number of participants for closely inspect the opinions and perceptions. 36 teachers of English foreign language and 826 students of Saudi Arabian university will be the participants for the study. The teachers will come from different countries and the students are all Arabians.  The students will be asked separately in the experiment where they will give their own conception on the teacher’s roles on learning autonomy with technology out-of the classroom (Richards, 2015). 

Data collection:   collection of data will be done by collecting data from the analysis done from pre-structured interviews with the applicants to get an in-depth analysis to understand the perceptions and views of both the students and the teachers. The process is very simple there will be a interview individually with the researchers and with the participants, where the interview will probably last between 30-45 minutes which will be recorded in audio form. According to other researchers, semi-structured interviews help to cover and organize the topic in a formal manner and will help in covering the areas that are lagging behind. In addition, the interviews are very important to the teachers so that they can help in acquiring in-depth understanding the lives, experiences and beliefs in a way out of any controversies. 

Data Analysis: The data that will be collected from the interviewers will be properly checked multiple times by the group of researchers for accuracy. The researchers, to analyze the experimented data and to find out the important notable things that addresses the research questions, will use separate thematic analysis. Separate categories will be used for the teachers and as for the students to find out and identify the similarities or differences, of perceptions and views between the participants (Kohonen et al., 2013).

The outcome of the result pointed out that motivational techniques are not used in foreign language classes, which is a very important part for the learner’s motivation like motivational teaching, motivational techniques and teacher behavior (Reeve, 2013). Motivation techniques play a very important role in the acquisition of foreign language. The learning autonomy out-of-class practice is very much important with the learners, the main part of teacher is supporting the learner by giving them proper knowledge and guidance with technology (Haerens et al., 2015) .The main outcome of the experiment that came is lack of motivation to the learners. Motivation is important as it influence the confidence and self-acquisition, intelligence, anxiety, language of the student. Self-belief is the main key point, the teacher has to make the student realize that how important is self-belief, they need to build the confidence in the student (Reeve, 2013).  According to the research and studies the student and the teachers both have important role to play where the teacher has the most important role, as they are the representative of the educational organization. The teachers need to guide the student properly and support them in every possible way in autonomous learning. The perceptions of the teachers act as a motivational guide for the students, which builds up the confidence and the beliefs in the study. There are several reasons that can say the low and rare use of utilization of the techniques with technology where the main part plays by formal school setting. The formal school setting provides very few opportunities as because there is lack of space and the teachers cannot look after every single student so it cannot be considered as the best place for learner’s autonomy (Bahanshal, 2013).

The autonomous learning program is going through a bad phase and the perception of the teachers show that the conditions are not encouraging as the students still lack in their decision making abilities. The students compare and assess their marks with their classmates, which show their concern to secure good marks in the program. The participation and motivational level of the students are not up to the mark even though they are eager to earn good grades. The school students in Saudi are not motivated to learn English so they do not develop a background, which is suitable for the autonomous learning. The basic self-learning or the independent learning starts when they join the university programs. However, several research and studies show that the students should be considered as the equal partners of the learning program and so they should be given the responsibility of deciding the place, pace and the time of the opted course. This will help in boosting the confidence of the students, as it will provide them with a sense of responsibility. However, there are many teachers who face difficulty in incorporating the students in the decision making process as the expectation of the students vary and they are comfortable with a different learning style.

Conclusion

While concluding from the above discussion, it can be stated that teachers have many different roles in developing and improving the learner’s language learning. Learning autonomy will help the students to improve their own capabilities and take responsibilities of their own learning to get own achievements. This study also concludes that teachers are expected to provide guidance, monitoring and valuable advices that would help in learning foreign language, as the technology is used widely now among the people and students the teachers important responsibilities in guiding the students and providing the learners with new strategies and useful resources. The aim of this study was to explore and examine the contrasting perceptions of the teachers and the students and their roles and responsibilities. The current result of the experiment and research is expected to give ample information for the teacher’s role and perspective in teaching English language in Saudi Arabia.   

References:

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Al Asmari, A. (2013). Practices and prospects of learner autonomy: Teachers’ perceptions. English Language Teaching, 6(3), 1.

Albedaiwi, S. A. (2014). EFL materials in public school classrooms in Saudi Arabia: an investigation of the extent to which teachers engage in materials/textbooks development in order to design learning experiences to meet the needs of their students as an indicator of teacher autonomy (Doctoral dissertation, University of Glasgow).

Bahanshal, D. A. (2013). The effect of large classes on English teaching and learning in Saudi secondary schools. English Language Teaching, 6(11), 49.

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