Autonomy in Second Language Learning Managing The Resources

Second Language Learning and Teaching
Mirosław Pawlak
Anna Mystkowska-Wiertelak
Jakub Bielak Editors
Autonomy in
Second Language
Learning:
Managing the
Resources
Series editor
Mirosław Pawlak, Kalisz, Poland
About the Series
The series brings together volumes dealing with different aspects of learning and
teaching second and foreign languages. The titles included are both monographs
and edited collections focusing on a variety of topics ranging from the processes
underlying second language acquisition, through various aspects of language
learning in instructed and non-instructed settings, to different facets of the teaching
process, including syllabus choice, materials design, classroom practices and
evaluation. The publications reflect state-of-the-art developments in those areas,
they adopt a wide range of theoretical perspectives and follow diverse research
paradigms. The intended audience are all those who are interested in naturalistic
and classroom second language acquisition, including researchers, methodologists,
curriculum and materials designers, teachers and undergraduate and graduate
students undertaking empirical investigations of how second languages are learnt
and taught.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10129

Mirosław Pawlak Anna Mystkowska-Wiertelak
•
Jakub Bielak
Editors
Autonomy in Second
Language Learning:
Managing the Resources
123
Editors
Mirosław Pawlak Jakub Bielak
Zakład Filologii Angielskiej, Wydział Zakład Filologii Angielskiej, Wydział
Pedagogiczno-Artystyczny Pedagogiczno-Artystyczny
Adam Mickiewicz University Adam Mickiewicz University
Kalisz, Wielkopolskie Kalisz, Wielkopolskie
Poland Poland
Zakład Filologii Angielskiej, Wydział
Pedagogiczno-Artystyczny
Adam Mickiewicz University
Kalisz, Wielkopolskie
Poland
ISSN 2193-7648 ISSN 2193-7656 (electronic)

ISBN 978-3-319-07763-5 ISBN 978-3-319-07764-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-07764-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016953647
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017

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Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Part I Developing Learner Autonomy
The Role of Autonomy in Learning and Teaching Foreign
Language Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Mirosław Pawlak
A Goal-Setting Logbook as an Instrument Fostering Learner
Autonomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Anna Klimas
Simulation as a Strategy for Enhancing Learner Autonomy
in Developing Communicative Competence in ESP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Zdeňka Schormová
Developing Learners’ Intercultural Competence Through
Autonomous Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Paweł Sobkowiak
Educating Towards Learner Autonomy in Early Education . . . . . . . . . . 67
Magdalena Wawrzyniak-Śliwska
Learner Autonomy: The Role of Educational Materials
in Fostering Self-evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Halina Wiśniewska
Student-Generated Vocabulary Tests as a Way of Fostering
Autonomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Aleksandra Jankowska and Michał Jankowski
v
vi Contents
Part II Language Learning Strategies

Exploring the Relationship Between Intelligence and the Use
of Language Learning Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Larysa Grzegorzewska
Fostering Learner Autonomy Through Vocabulary
Strategy Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Maria Pilar Agustín-Llach and Andrés Canga Alonso
Part III Teacher Autonomy

Preservice Teachers’ Perceptions of Teacher Autonomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Danuta Gabryś-Barker
Possible Selves and Student Teachers’ Autonomous Identity . . . . . . . . . . 179
Dorota Werbińska
Linguistic Autonomy with Recourse to the Concept of Critical
Language Awareness: A Practical Proposal for Evaluating
Students’ Political Autonomy in Foreign Language Learning . . . . . . . . . 197
Hadrian Lankiewicz
Editors and Contributors
About the Editors
Mirosław Pawlak is Professor of English in the English Department, Faculty of

Pedagogy and Fine Arts of Adam Mickiewicz University, Kalisz, Poland, and
Department of Research on Language Learning and Teaching, Faculty of Philology,
State University of Applied Sciences, Konin, Poland. His main areas of interest are
SLA theory and research, form-focused instruction, pronunciation teaching, class-
room discourse, learner autonomy, communication and learning strategies, gram-
mar learning strategies, motivation and willingness to communicate. His recent
publications include Error correction in the foreign language classroom.
Reconsidering the issues (2015, Springer) and several edited collections on learner
autonomy, language policies of the Council of Europe, form-focused instruction,
speaking in a foreign language, classroom-oriented research and individual learner
differences. He is Editor of the journals Studies in Second language Learning and
Teaching (www.ssllt.amu.edu.pl) and Konin Language Studies (http://www.ksj.
pwsz.konin.edu.pl/?page_id=466&lang=en), as well as the book series Second
Language Learning and Teaching, published by Springer (http://www.springer.
com/series/10129). E-mail: pawlakmi@amu.edu.pl
Anna Mystkowska-Wiertelak, Ph.D., is a teacher and teacher trainer working at
the Department of English Studies, Faculty of Pedagogy and Fine Arts of Adam
Mickiewicz University, Kalisz, Poland as well as Faculty of Philology, State
University of Applied Sciences, Konin, Poland. Her main interests comprise, apart
from teacher education, second language acquisition theory and research, language
learning strategies, learner autonomy, form-focused instruction, willingness to
communicate and motivation. E-mail: mystkows@amu.edu.pl
Jakub Bielak holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics obtained from the School of English of
Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland. He is Assistant Professor at the
Department of English Studies of the Faculty of Pedagogy and Fine Arts at Kalisz,
Adam Mickiewicz University, and Senior Lecturer at the State University of
vii
viii Editors and Contributors
Applied Sciences in Konin, Poland. His research activity has been centered
around cognitive linguistics, form-focused instruction and individual variation in
language learning. He has co-authored one book, authored and co-authored several
articles in journals and edited volumes, and co-edited one edited volume. E-mail:
kubabogu@amu.edu.pl
Contributors
Andrés Canga Alonso (Ph.D. in English Philology, University of Oviedo) is

Lecturer at the University of La Rioja. His Ph.D. thesis on learner autonomy
received an award from the Spanish Ministry of Education. His research focuses on
the development of learner autonomy and vocabulary acquisition based on e-mail
tandem exchanges. He is a member of GLAUR research group and CRAL (Center
for Research in the Applications of Language). E-mail: andres.canga@unirioja.es
Danuta Gabryś-Barker is Professor of English at the University of Silesia,
Katowice, Poland, where she lectures and supervises MA and Ph.D. theses in
applied linguistics, psycholinguistics and especially in second language acquisition.
Her main areas of interest are multilingualism and applied psycholinguistics. As a
teacher trainer she lectures on research methods in second/multiple language
acquisition and TEFL projects. Prof. Gabryś-Barker has published over a hundred
articles nationally and internationally, as well as the books Aspects of multilingual
storage, processing and retrieval (2005) and Reflectivity in pre-service teacher
education (2012). She has edited ten volumes, among others for Multilingual
Matters, Springer and the University of Silesia Press. She is Editor-in-Chief (to-
gether with Eva Vetter) of International Journal of Multilingualism (Taylor &
Francis/Routledge) and the journal Theory and Practice of Second Language
Acquisition (University of Silesia Press). E-mail: danuta.gabrys@gmail.com
Larysa Grzegorzewska completed her MA at Mińsk State Linguistic University.
She teaches English for Specific Purposes at Pope John Paul II State School of
Higher Education in Biała Podlaska and is a doctoral student at the University of
Warsaw. Her research interest lies in the psychology of the language learner, with a
special focus on individual differences and language learning strategies. Her Ph.D.
thesis explores the relationship between intelligence and the use of language
learning strategies. E-mail: larissa2@tlen.pl
Aleksandra Jankowska, Ph.D., is Head of the Centre for English Teacher Training
at the Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. For 20 years
(1992–2012) she was Head of the Teacher Training College at AMU and from 1994
to 2008 Leader of the Wielkopolska Region of INSETT, the national in-service
teacher training program run by the Centre for Teacher Development in Warsaw.
She is an experienced EFL teacher and teacher trainer. Her interests include teacher
education, foreign language teaching at the advanced level, task-based teaching,
Editors and Contributors ix
classroom interaction, vocabulary acquisition and the place of culture in the process
of foreign language learning. E-mail: ajank@amu.edu.pl
Michał Jankowski works as Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of English, Adam
Mickiewicz University in Poznań, where he has taught advanced EFL courses for
over 30 years, specializing in teaching pronunciation. His research interests include
practical lexicography, computational linguistics and lexical data mining. Among
the subjects that he also teaches are information technology and statistics for lan-
guage studies and applications of software tools in quantitative linguistic analyses.
E-mail: mjank@wa.amu.edu.pl
Anna Klimas, Ph.D., is an academic teacher and a teacher trainer. She obtained her
doctoral degree from the University of Wroclaw in 2010. Her research interests in
applied linguistics and language teaching methodology are in the areas of learner
and teacher motivation and autonomy as well as the research methods used in
classroom-based studies. E-mail: annaklimas@hotmail.com
Hadrian Lankiewicz, Ph.D., received his doctoral and postdoctoral degree from
the University of Gdańsk, where he is currently Associate Professor in the
Department of Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies. His scientific interests
oscillate between history, American literature and applied linguistics with the pri-
mary focus on language acquisition and foreign language teaching methodology. In
recent years, his research has concentrated on an ecological metaphor in language
learning and critical language awareness. E-mail: hadrianlank@interia.pl
Maria Pilar Agustín-Llach (Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics, Universidad de La
Rioja, MPhil Spanish Applied Linguistics, Universidad Antonio de Nebrija) is
Lecturer at the University of La Rioja. Her main research interests are second and
foreign langÎuage acquisition, particularly vocabulary acquisition in a foreign
language and factors that influence this process. The variables she has attended to
are L1 influence, age, L2 proficiency, gender or L2 learning context (CLIL vs.
non-CLIL). She is a member of the research group on Applied Linguistics GLAUR.
E-mail: maria-del-pilar.agustin@unirioja.es
Zdeňka Schormová, Ph.D., has been teaching English to secondary and tertiary
learners. She specializes in English for specific purposes, particularly medical
English (teaching Traumateam of the Czech Republic) and she has carried out
research on the development of communicative competence and learner autonomy
via simulation. She teaches academic writing and presenting in English to doctoral
students and university lecturers. She runs international projects which support
active learning in realistic settings and promote close cooperation between language
teachers in ESP, teachers of specialized subjects and hospital specialists in the
preparation of realistic teaching materials. E-mail: 94034@mail.muni.cz
Paweł Sobkowiak, Ph.D., is Senior Lecturer at the School of Law and
Administration, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, where he teaches business
English and communication to students of management. His main research interests
x Editors and Contributors
include different aspects of teaching ESP, mainly business English, professional

development of language teachers as well as, more recently, the development of
learners’ intercultural competence and intercultural teaching and learning. E-mail:
pawelsob@amu.edu.pl
Magdalena Wawrzyniak-Śliwska, Ph.D., is Senior Lecturer at the Institute of
English and American Studies, Gdańsk University. She holds an MA in Linguistics
and Ph.D. in Pedagogy. One of her interests is learner individualization. She is a
certified tutor and has conducted a number of tutorials since 2014. Her current
research interests include learner autonomy, teaching English to young learners and
very young learners, PRESETT and INSETT teacher training, discourse analysis
and some aspects of e-learning in language teaching and learning. E-mail:
magdalenaws@ug.edu.pl
Dorota Werbińska, Ph.D., works at the Institute of Modern Languages at
Pomeranian Academy in Słupsk, Poland. She received her doctoral degree from
Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland. She has taught in schools and
worked as a foreign language teacher adviser. Her research interests lie in the area
of language teacher qualitative studies, with a focus on language teacher cognition,
teacher identity, reflexivity and change. She is the author/editor of three books, two
edited collections, and over fifty articles and book chapters published in Poland and
internationally. E-mail: werbinsk@pro.onet.pl
Halina Wiśniewska works at Koźminski University in Warsaw, Poland. She
teaches business studies and intercultural business communication. She is the
author of content-led ESP textbooks as well as articles on ESP methodology, ESP
materials development, and various business communication issues. E-mail:
halinannawu@gmail.com
Introduction
It is hard to take issue with the assumption that autonomy is a much sought-after
attribute in both foreign language learners and their teachers. In the case of the
former, it is perhaps a dream of most teachers, at least those who are truly dedicated
to their jobs, to be able to work with students who are ready to go beyond what is
required of them in the course, devote time to learning the target language out of
school, be capable of identifying their strengths and weaknesses, eagerly look for
additional materials and practice opportunities, and draw on suitable learning
strategies, as all of this would greatly enhance their chances of success. As regards
the latter, while much depends on how motivated students are, many of them would
surely opt for teachers who do not confine themselves to following the coursebook
closely according to the guidelines given in the teacher’s manual, beam with cre-
ativity, are constantly on the lookout for inspiring topics and tasks, and are adept at
infecting learners with their enthusiasm. Unfortunately, both learners and teachers
of this kind are difficult to come by, irrespective of the context in which foreign
language instruction takes place. This is because, confronted with heavy teaching
loads, administrative duties, curricular goals, examination requirements, parents’
expectations as well as scant classroom time, many practitioners choose to play it
safe and focus on the material to be covered. In such a situation, a very similar
approach is adopted by most learners who are also weighed down with numerous
obligations, with the prospect of final exams looming on the horizon not being
conducive to manifesting independence, particularly if a foreign language is not
their first priority.
In light of such realities, it is fully warranted to consider steps, however modest
they might be, that could be taken to ensure that autonomy is at least to some extent
fostered in the language classroom and that teachers become convinced of its value
for both students and themselves, as it is clear that the former is unlikely to happen
without the latter. This is the rationale behind the present volume which brings
together papers dealing with the development of both learner and teacher auton-
omy. The book has been divided into three parts, each including articles which deal
with a different aspect of autonomy in foreign language learning and teaching.
Part I, Developing Learner Autonomy, contains seven papers, focusing on the
xi
xii Introduction
various techniques, tasks and resources that can be employed to enhance learner
independence, both in general, with reference to target language subsystem and
with respect to evaluation. Part II, Language Learning Strategies, is made up of
only two contributions dealing with the relationship between strategy use and
intelligence as well as the benefits of strategies-based instruction in the realm of
vocabulary. Finally, Part III, Teacher Autonomy, includes papers dedicated to
pre-service teachers, focusing on their perceptions of autonomy, the development of
autonomous identities and the link between autonomy and the concept of critical
language awareness. We are confident that the papers included in this edited col-
lection will serve as a source of inspiration and reflection for researchers exploring
different facets of autonomy in foreign language instruction, students working on
theses dealing with autonomous learning, and practitioners wishing to devise ways
to foster some degree of learner independence in their classrooms.
Mirosław Pawlak
Jakub Bielak
Part I
Developing Learner Autonomy
The Role of Autonomy in Learning
and Teaching Foreign Language
Grammar
Mirosław Pawlak
Abstract As is the case with the learning of other language skills and subsystems,
success in learning foreign language grammar entails taking charge of one’s own
learning and going beyond the requirements specified by the teacher. This is par-
ticularly important if it is acknowledged that complete mastery of this subsystem is
by no means confined to the familiarity with rules and the ability to apply them in
traditional, controlled exercises, but also involves the capacity for employing par-
ticular structures in spontaneous communication. In other words, it is necessary for
the learner to develop both explicit and implicit command of the grammatical items
taught, or at least to automatize his or her declarative knowledge to such an extent
that the language features can be effectively employed in real time. If such a goal is
to be attained, however, learners have to work on grammar in their own time, and it
is also necessary for the teacher to encourage autonomous behaviors in this area.
The aim of this paper is to outline the ways in which learner autonomy in learning
grammar can be exercised as well as the steps that can be taken to foster an
autonomous approach to learning this subsystem.
1 Introduction
Despite the fact that there is general consensus at present that grammar teaching, or
form-focused instruction (FFI), is facilitative of second or foreign language learn-
ing, or that it may even be indispensable in some contexts (cf. Ellis, 2008; Loewen,
2014, 2015; Nassaji & Fotos, 2011; Pawlak, 2006, 2013a, 2014), the benefits of this
kind of pedagogic intervention are by no means guaranteed and hinge on a number
of factors. On the one hand, a crucial role is played by the instructional techniques
and procedures applied (see below for a brief overview), the effectiveness of which
M. Pawlak (&)
State University of Applied Sciences, Konin, Poland
e-mail: pawlakmi@amu.edu.pl
M. Pawlak
Adam Mickiewicz University, Kalisz, Poland
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 3

M. Pawlak et al. (eds.), Autonomy in Second Language Learning:
Managing the Resources, Second Language Learning and Teaching,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-07764-2_1
4 M. Pawlak
is mediated by individual (e.g., working memory, learning style), linguistic (e.g.,

the complexity of a linguistic feature) and contextual (e.g., overall educational
context, the nature of classroom interaction) variables (cf. Ellis, 2010a; Pawlak,
2014).1 On the other hand, equally, if not more important, particularly in situations
of limited in- and out-of-class exposure to the target language (TL), which tran-
spires in foreign language contexts, is the extent to which learners are able and
willing to take responsibility for studying and gaining greater control of grammar,
or exercise autonomy with respect to learning this subsystem (cf. Benson, 2011).
Such involvement on the part of learners and their readiness to go beyond what may
be required by the teacher, course or program become even more vital if we
consider the fact that the mastery of grammar structures is by no means confined to
the ability to use correct forms in controlled exercises or on pen-and-paper tests,
and also involves the knowledge of the meaning and use of these structures as well
as the skill in using them accurately, meaningfully and appropriately in sponta-
neous, real-time communication. Surely, these goals cannot possibly be achieved
only in the classroom where instruction comprises three or four hours a week and
numerous objectives have to be pursued, even in cases when it is augmented to
some extent by out-of-school tutoring. With this in mind, the present paper aims to
demonstrate how autonomy can be manifested in learning grammar and how such
an autonomous approach can be fostered. In the first part, emphasis is placed on the
nature of grammar, the learning and teaching of this TL subsystem, as well as the
techniques and procedures that teachers have at their disposal. This is followed by
the justification of the necessity of developing autonomy in learning TL grammar,
consideration of the ways in which learner independence in this area can be pro-
moted, and tentative implications for everyday foreign language learning and
teaching, together with caveats that should be carefully considered by practitioners.
What also needs to be stressed at the very outset is that the main thrust here is not
on explicating the different interpretations of the concept of autonomy, focused on
in so many of the chapters included in this edited collection, but, rather, an illus-
tration of how it can be applied to the mastery of grammatical structures.
2 Grammar, Grammar Learning and Grammar Teaching
Before embarking on the discussion of autonomy in learning foreign language

grammar, it seems fitting to devote some space to confronting some common myths
with respect to grammar, providing a definition of this subsystem, explaining what
the knowledge of grammar involves, and, finally, illustrating the techniques and
procedures that teachers can fall back upon in order to introduce grammar structures
1
Although this framework was proposed with respect to corrective feedback and aimed to illustrate
the different foci of research into its effectiveness, it can be extended to grammar instruction in its
entirety, of which error correction constitutes an inherent part.
The Role of Autonomy in Learning and Teaching … 5
and later provide students with ample practice opportunities. As superbly demon-
strated by Larsen-Freeman (2003), a number of unfounded beliefs, or myths,
concerning grammar can be identified among language teachers, which to a greater
or lesser extent negatively impinge on their instructional practices. They are
reflected, among others, in the assumption that this subsystem constitutes yet
another area of knowledge, the temptation to equate grammaticality with accuracy,
the perception of grammar in terms of a set of rules, the conviction that grammar
rules are arbitrary, the belief that there always exists one correct answer, or the
notion that grammar operates only at the level of the sentence. Although there is
without doubt some truth in each of these assumptions because, after all, grammar
can be associated to some extent with correctness, rules or isolated sentences, they
can be regarded as myths because they represent gross oversimplifications, thereby
being extremely misleading. For example, while learners may be explicitly taught
facts about grammar (e.g., irregular verbs) or specific rules (e.g., those for the
formation of the passive), the ultimate goal is for them to use this knowledge to
attain communicative goals, the use of grammar has to be not only accurate but also
meaningful and appropriate, and there is inherent logic to the way in which the
system of grammar is constructed in any given language. In addition, the choice of
a specific structure in a particular situation is a function of a number of individual
and contextual variables (e.g., when asked to use the verb to go in a sentence ending
in yesterday, the learner might opt for I went, I was going, I had gone, I was about
to go or even I would have gone, depending on his or her intentions), while the
choice of the grammatical tense in the first sentence of a story is bound to affect
choices made several paragraphs later (see Larsen-Freeman, 2003).
One way to avoid such unhelpful overgeneralizations and to minimize their
deleterious consequences is to offer a comprehensive definition of grammar, such
that would be applicable to any language, highlight its most salient characteristics
and explain what the mastery of this subsystem entails. Insightfully arguing that
“(…) a description of the system is an essential starting point for proper pedagogy”
and stressing the need “(…) to accommodate both traditional and newer approaches
(…)”, Larsen-Freeman (2010, p. 521) defines grammar as “(…) a system of
meaningful structures and patterns that are governed by particular pragmatic con-
straints”. She goes on to explain that those structures and patterns can refer to
morphemes (e.g., third person -s), function words (e.g., is), phrases (e.g., the verb
depend has to be followed by on), clauses (e.g., the canonical word order, such as
S-V-DO-IO in English), clausal formulas (e.g., I am really sorry to hear that…),
discourse-level patterns (e.g., theme-rheme organization in English) or typological
patterns (e.g., the subject prominence in English) (Larsen-Freeman, 2010, pp. 521–
522). Swan (2013, p. 558) adopts a somewhat narrower view by stating that, in
order to deal with the need to group words in a meaningful way, languages avail
themselves of “(…) the devices that we call ‘syntax’ and ‘morphology’, supple-
menting purely lexical information by establishing ordering and movement con-
ventions, changing the forms of words, and using function words (like English may
or not)”. Irrespective of a particular definition that can be employed as a point of
reference, it should be emphasized that grammar is complex and multidimensional,
6 M. Pawlak
not least because it is sometimes difficult to draw a line between vocabulary and
grammar due to the interdependence of the two (i.e., hence the term lexicogram-
mar), the distinctiveness of spoken and written grammar, or the role of grammatical
choices is structuring discourse (cf. Larsen-Freeman & DeCarrico, 2010). As
underscored by Larsen-Freeman (2001, 2003, 2010), grammar is also dynamic and
should be viewed not only as a product, reflective of static rules as well as the
prescriptions and proscriptions they bring with them, but also, or perhaps even
primarily, as a process, indicative of the choices language users constantly have to
make as they participate in ongoing communication, try to position themselves in it
and adjust their messages to contextual influences (cf. Batstone, 1994).
Larsen-Freeman (2002, p. 26) explains: “Language users must constantly be
scanning the environment, observing their interlocutors and interpreting what they
are hearing/seeing, in order to make decisions about how to respond in accurate,
meaningful and appropriate ways, and then carry out their decisions ‘online’, i.e.
they must then somehow activate what they have decided upon. This clearly entails
a dynamic process”. For this reason, she suggests using the term grammaring,
which stresses the fact that grammar should be viewed as a skill rather than a body
of knowledge and refers to the ability to use linguistic features accurately, mean-
ingfully and appropriately.
Obviously, being able to use grammar as a dynamic tool to respond to the
ever-changing exigencies of a particular communicative event involves possessing
appropriate resources and having the capacity to access these resources in real time.
According to Larsen-Freeman (2001, 2003), the knowledge of a specific gram-
matical structure has three dimensions which refer to (1) form (i.e., how this
grammatical feature is constructed, which involves the use of appropriate pho-
nemes, graphemes, grammatical morphemes as well as syntactic patterns),
(2) meaning (i.e., semantic information related to lexical and grammatical mean-
ings, derivational morphemes or lexical phrases) and (3) use (i.e., pragmatic con-
siderations which need to be taken into account when the structure is employed
such as power relationships, preceding discourse, the nature of the communicative
event). Thus, for example, in the case of the English passive voice, it would be
necessary for learners, at the most basic level, to know that it is formed with the use
of the right form of the auxiliary be and the past participle, it confers a different
status on the performer of the action and the entity affected by it, and it is used to
deemphasize the agent. Larsen-Freeman (2003) also stresses the interdependence
between the three aspects of grammatical knowledge, with a change in one of them
triggering modifications in the other two. What also needs to be kept in mind,
however, is that, despite the considerable value of the framework, familiarity with
all this information can only come in handy when the learner is capable of using a
TL feature accurately, meaningfully and appropriately in real time. In other words,
it is clearly insufficient to develop only explicit knowledge of these three dimen-
sions, which is conscious, declarative and can be accessed only when learners have
sufficient time at their disposal. It is also necessary to cater to the development of
implicit knowledge, which is intuitive, procedural and can be used in real-time
processing required by ongoing communication (see Ellis, 2007), or at least
automatize explicit knowledge to such an extent that it becomes accessible when

attentional resources have to be directed to other aspects of communication (cf.
DeKeyser, 2010; Pawlak, 2012a, 2013a). This means that learners may know how
to construct passive voice utterances, what they mean and why they should be used
in specific circumstances, but, without the requisite type of linguistic knowledge,
they will not be able to deploy these resources in on-line processing, thus making
errors or using the passive where it is unnecessary. Finally, it should be pointed out
that different aspects of grammar are learned differently as are the explicit and
implicit dimensions of grammatical knowledge, which has far-reaching ramifica-
tions for effective instruction. Larsen-Freeman and DeCarrico (2010), for example,
make the point that while learning the structure of a TL feature or lexical phrases in
which it is used may require meaningful repetition, the meaning dimension might
call for establishing form-function mappings, and issues related to use might
necessitate appreciating the potential effect of the linguistic choices made in a
specific context. As regards explicit knowledge, it is not constrained by orders and
sequences of acquisition and therefore it can be acquired at any age with the help of
cognitive operations deliberately employed in learning any other content, such as
history or math, benefiting from explanations or conscious practice. By contrast,
implicit knowledge is developmentally constrained as well as age-dependent, with
its mastery requiring a considerable degree of mastery of syntactic operations. This
means that acquisition requires engagement in real-time interaction and meaningful
practice, a condition that is also indispensable for the attainment of the more modest
goal of a high level of automaticity of explicit knowledge (see DeKeyser, 2007,
2010; Ellis, 2007; Pawlak, 2013a).
In light of these issues, of vital importance is the choice of the techniques and
procedures that are employed with the purpose of introducing and practicing
grammar structures as well as their adept integration so that they can contribute to
the development of explicit and implicit knowledge, or at least sufficient automa-
tization of the former. The instructional options that teachers can draw on in this
respect have been classified in different ways, with much depending on whether the
pedagogical intervention is viewed in terms of a focus on forms, where the struc-
tural syllabus is a point of reference and the PPP (presentation – practice – pro-
duction) sequence is broadly followed, or a focus on form, where learners’ attention
is drawn to specific features as they are engaged in genuine communication (e.g.,
Celce-Murcia, 2015; Ellis, 1997, 1998, 2005, 2010b; Loewen, 2011; Nassaji &
Fotos, 2011; Pawlak, 2004; Williams, 2005; see Pawlak, 2006, 2014, for over-
views). For the purposes of the present paper, instructional options in grammar
teaching will be categorized following the classification put forward by Ellis (1997)
and subsequently amended by Pawlak (2004, 2006), which is based on the dis-
tinction between learner-performance options and feedback options. The former
include focused communication tasks, which necessitate productive or receptive use
of a given feature for successful completion (e.g., the Present Progressive to
describe a scene in the park in a spot-the-difference task), and feature-focused
activities, where learners are expected to attend to a specific form much more
deliberately. The latter are subdivided into consciousness-raising tasks, employed
8 M. Pawlak
with the purpose of developing explicit knowledge, as is the case when introducing
grammar structures by means of deduction (i.e., rule provision and explanation) or
induction (i.e., rule discovery), or various practice tasks, which can take the form of
output-oriented (i.e., forming a continuum from those entirely controlled to rela-
tively free) or input-based (i.e., those that do not require immediate production of
the targeted item, as the case might be with input enhancement; see
Mystkowska-Wiertelak & Pawlak, 2012, for discussion of such options) activities.
As regards feedback options, they are related to error correction, with crucial dis-
tinctions between explicit and implicit corrective feedback (i.e., such of which the
learners may be more or less cognizant), and output-prompting and input-providing
corrective feedback (i.e., such that does or does not entail a requirement for
self-repair) (see Pawlak, 2014; Sheen & Ellis, 2011).
Clearly, the job of the teacher is to combine the different instructional options in
such a way that instruction becomes most beneficial in a specific situation, taking
into consideration the realities of a particular context (e.g., access to the target
language outside the classroom), learners’ characteristics (e.g., their age or learning
styles) and needs (e.g., their concern with grammar), the nature of the targeted
linguistic feature (e.g., its difficulty in terms of explicit and implicit knowledge),
and what Larsen-Freeman (2003) calls the learning challenge, or the dimension of
grammar knowledge that is most in need of pedagogic intervention. What should
also be kept in mind is that teachers’ choices with respect to predominant
instructional options, which, quite logically, are bound to translate into techniques
used for assessment purposes, are bound to have a major bearing on the ways in
which learners go about studying and practicing grammar structures (cf. Pawlak,
2009). This, in turn, may have consequences for the extent to which those learners
may be able or willing to exercise autonomy in this area, an issue which is the focus
of the remainder of this paper.
3 The Need for Autonomy in Learning Foreign Language

Grammar
As mentioned in the introduction, while the author is fully aware of the complexity
of the concept of autonomy, the diverse ways in which it is understood, the different
forms that it can assume and the various levels at which it can be manifested (see
e.g., Benson, 2007, 2011; Benson & Voller, 2013), such issues will not be elab-
orated upon in the present paper, since its main concern is demonstrating how
learner independence can be exhibited in the task of trying to master foreign lan-
guage grammar. With this in mind, following Holec (1981, p. 3), autonomy is
simply understood here as the “(…) ability to take charge of one’s own learning”
and entails taking “the responsibility for all the decisions concerning all aspects of
this learning”. As such, it is evident, among other things, in setting proximal and
distal goals in the process of language learning, choosing resources and strategies
intended to facilitate the attainment of these goals, effectively managing the

available time, both in and out of the classroom, engaging in objective
self-evaluation, or demonstrating awareness of one’s own needs, objectives and
preferences (cf. Hedge, 2000; Pawlak, Marciniak, Lis, & Bartczak, 2006). Two
important qualifications need to be made at this juncture. First, it is recognized that
autonomy in language learning involves both a capacity for adopting the approach
outlined above and a willingness to do so, as it is obvious that although learners
may be able to manifest self-direction, they may refuse to do so for a number of
reasons (cf. Littlewood, 1996). Second, the discussion is based on the assumption
that while the ultimate goal might be proactive autonomy, in which learners are
fully independent in their choices, which “affirms their individuality and sets up
directions in a world which they themselves have partially created”, perhaps a more
realistic goal in most cases of institutionalized foreign language education may be
reactive autonomy, or “the kind which does not create its own directions but, once a
direction has been initiated, enables learners to organize their resources autono-
mously in order to reach their goal” (Littlewood, 1999, p. 75). While admittedly
more modest, such an aim is much more tangible and much easier to achieve, also
when it comes to learning foreign language grammar.
A question that arises at this point is why teachers should go to the trouble of
promoting in their learners an autonomous approach to learning grammar struc-
tures, a task that is likely to pose major challenges, not least because the available
classroom time is typically limited, thus constituting a precious commodity. On the
one hand, it could simply be argued that, as is the case with all the other TL skills
and subsystems, success in developing mastery of grammar depends upon the
extent to which learners choose to take charge of their learning and are prepared to
go beyond the requirements specified by teachers. After all, whatever the area of the
TL, three or four language classes a week, which is perhaps the norm for most
learners at different educational levels in foreign language contexts, are blatantly
insufficient to guarantee discernable progress if they are not accompanied by regular
practice outside school, not so much in the course of additional instruction but,
rather, in the home. On the other hand, given what has been said about the com-
plexity and multidimensionality of grammar as well as the intricate processes
involved in its learning, it would appear that adopting an autonomous approach is
of particular significance in the case of this aspect of TL systemic competence. For
one thing, the place of grammar instruction in language education has always
aroused major controversy, with teachers and learners, mainly due to their previous
experiences, often adopting extreme attitudes towards it and favoring quite dis-
parate classroom practices. For this reason, the ability to display autonomy might
prove to be invaluable both for students who, on account of their instructors’
preferences, are deprived of the opportunity to improve their command of grammar
even though they need it for academic or vocational purposes, and for those who
may be discontent with the manner in which TL features are taught, either because
instruction excessively focuses on the product (e.g., stressing rules, accuracy or
formal practice), or, on the contrary, is too innovative, being confined to items that
are problematic (e.g., corrective feedback after the performance of a communicative
10 M. Pawlak
task). Secondly, the need for autonomy is justified by the fact that the teaching of
grammar can only be fully effective if it takes account of the varying proficiency
levels, the place on the interlanguage continuum (i.e., orders and sequences of
acquisition), often disparate goals and needs, as well as a wide array of individual
learner differences, ranging from various components of aptitude (e.g., working
memory), through self-concept (e.g., self-evaluation of grammar competence), to
fluctuating motivation (e.g., involvement in some grammar tasks but not in others)
(see e.g., Dörnyei, 2005; Dörnyei & Ryan, 2015; Williams, Mercer, & Ryan, 2015).
It is clear that accommodating all of these variables during a language lesson is
simply not feasible and only learners themselves can ensure the occurrence of
optimal conditions and environments in their own time on condition that they are
equipped with the right tools and have the necessary mindset. Thirdly, indepen-
dence and self-direction are important for the development of both explicit and
implicit knowledge, although perhaps not to the same degree. In the case of the
former, an autonomous approach is useful because it will aid learners in better
grasping the relevant rules, identifying problem areas that may be in need of
attention, seeking out resources that can be instruments in overcoming difficulties,
or going beyond the homework assignments set by the teacher by doing additional
exercises involving specific TL features. However, in the case of the development
of implicit knowledge, or accomplishing a high degree of automaticity of explicit
knowledge, the ability and readiness to manifest autonomy seems to be a necessary
condition for the reason that such a goal is clearly unattainable in the severely
limited classroom time where numerous objectives need to be pursued. The steps
that can be taken to foster autonomy in learning grammar are outlined in the
following section.
4 Ways of Promoting Autonomy in Teaching Foreign

Language Grammar
An autonomous approach to learning grammar can be encouraged in a number of

ways, many of which mirror the techniques that can be applied to foster autonomy
in the process of foreign language learning in its entirety (see e.g., Benson, 2011;
Komorowska, 2003; Pawlak et al., 2006). Since a thorough consideration of all of
these actions is beyond the scope of this paper and would in all likelihood require a
book of its own, in the subsections that follow, some basic ways of fostering
autonomy in this respect will first be briefly outlined and subsequently three areas
will be singled out for a more in-depth discussion, that is raising learners’ aware-
ness of issues involved in learning and teaching grammar, acquainting them with
grammar learning strategies, and promoting the use of information and computer
technology (ICT) in the study of TL grammar. Obviously, the application of these
techniques has to be carefully premediated taking into account the specificity of a
given learner group, with the effect that not all of them will be effective or suitable
under all circumstances.
4.1 Necessary Steps Towards Fostering Autonomy

in Learning Grammar
When it comes to some rudimentary, one could even say necessary, steps that
should be resorted to in order to instill in learners an autonomous approach to
learning grammar, they are closely linked with the way grammar is introduced and
practiced in the classroom, which recognizes the impact of predominant instruc-
tional procedures on the choice of learning strategies. These steps can be sum-
marized as follows:
1) encouraging a discovery approach to learning grammar, which entails greater
emphasis on different forms of induction; however, this should not be inter-
preted as meaning that getting learners to discover rules should be the default
mode of introducing grammar, as the character of a specific TL feature, learner
characteristics or the available amount of time can dictate otherwise (see
Pawlak, 2006);
2) setting up tasks enabling collaborative construction of grammatical knowledge,
where, in line with the claims of sociocultural theory (Lantolf, 2006), learners
engage in what is referred to as collaborative dialog (Swain, 2000) or lan-
guaging (Swain, 2006), reflecting on the use of the target language; one
example of such a task is a dictogloss activity, where students listen to a text
containing a lot of instances of the targeted feature, read twice at normal speed,
take notes and then have to come up with a text as close to the original as
possible;
3) creating opportunities to use the structures taught in communication, as this is
needed to trigger the development of implicit knowledge or at least bring about
automatization of explicit knowledge, without which real-time use of grammar
is impossible; this can be attained through frequent reliance on focused com-
munication tasks (see above), or the use of corrective feedback in response to a
particular category of errors in the course of communicative activities (e.g., the
passive in descriptions of famous landmarks);
4) encouraging experimentation with new language forms, which, yet again, calls
for tasks that require learners to use those forms for message conveyance in
speaking or in writing (e.g., making up a story in which the Past Continuous
has to be employed or describing houses or apartments, which calls for the use
of prepositions);
5) familiarizing learners with additional resources for the learning of grammar,
such as dictionaries in which they can find information about how specific parts
of speech are used, or reference books, which provide detailed information
about all the dimensions of a specific structure;
12 M. Pawlak
6) providing appropriate training in the use of such resources, which can ensure
skillful and effective application thereof in different situations; this might
involve, for instance, explaining to students what the codes included in the
dictionary mean or asking them to seek out forms meeting specified criteria;
7) encouraging productive and receptive use of the target language outside the
classroom, a goal that may not be easy to achieve in the case of students
coming from families with limited financial resources, residing in places where
access to the TL is hard to come by or having difficulty in accessing the
Internet; even under unpropitious circumstances, though, teachers can advise
learners to attend to the use of the grammar structures that have recently been
taught as they watch movies, read books or journals, and, when such oppor-
tunities present themselves, to actually use them when interacting with for-
eigners face to face or by means of the computer;
8) asking students to create their own exercises and tasks in which the grammar
structures that have recently been taught have to be used; these activities can
primarily serve the purpose of establishing and gaining control over explicit
knowledge but they could also foster the automatization of such knowledge or
the growth of the implicit representation; students could, for example, design
exercises requiring application of narrative tenses or find a set of pictures or
drawings which, when divided between group members, could provide
opportunities for the use of these TL features in spontaneous communication;
9) raising learners’ awareness of grammar-related issues, which could, for
instance, take the form of getting learners to confront the myths discussed
earlier in the present paper, making them cognizant of the complexity of this TL
subsystem, familiarizing them with the three dimensions of grammatical
knowledge, or explaining and exemplifying the notion of orders and sequences
of acquisition;
10) raising learners’ awareness of their own use of grammar, which boils down to
honing the skills of monitoring and self-evaluation with the purpose of
attending to and noticing potential problems with the use of grammar; learners
could be asked, for example, to audio-record their descriptions of famous places
with the use of the passive voice and then listen to them in order to identify or
correct their errors; another possibility is asking students to act in the capacity
of observers in focused communication tasks, jot down errors in the use of the
targeted structure and then discuss them with their peers.
4.2 Raising Awareness of Learning and Teaching Grammar
Although sensitizing students to the complexity of grammar, mentioned in the

previous section, plays an important role, even more useful in shaping their
autonomy is likely to be raising their awareness about the process of learning and
teaching of this TL subsystem. This aim could be accomplished, among other
things, by asking students to express their preferences concerning the study of

grammar in a whole-class mode, initiating small-group discussion about the most
efficacious ways of learning and teaching grammar, perhaps using narratives
describing specific learner profiles in this respect as a point of reference. Students
could also be encouraged to keep a diary about the difficulties they encounter in
learning grammar and the ways in which they deal with them, or to self-assess their
use of grammar structures in different tasks, for example with the help of
audio-recordings of oral and written output, an idea mentioned above, analysis of
the errors they committed that were noted down by the teacher, or specifically
designed self-assessment grids completed immediately after the completion of a
given activity. Since, due to insufficient knowledge, learners may experience dif-
ficulty in identifying pivotal issues on their own, what might be particularly
enlightening is administering questionnaires related to various aspects of
form-focused instruction, and then discussing their outcomes. Questionnaires of this
kind, such as the one designed by Pawlak (2011, 2013b), could, for example, tap
into learners’ opinions concerning overall importance of FFI, also with respect to
specific language skills, the choice of syllabus (e.g., structural vs. task-based), the
way in which lessons devoted to teaching grammar are constructed (e.g., the degree
to which FFI is integrated into communicative tasks or happens in isolation), the
manner in which grammar structures are introduced (e.g. deduction vs. induction),
the approaches to practicing structures with which students have been familiarized
(controlled vs. communicative activities), and ways of responding to grammar
errors (e.g., timing, source, the degree of explicitness, the requirement for
self-correction) (see also Loewen et al., 2009; Spada & Lightbown, 2008). To give
an example, awareness about introducing TL features could be enhanced with the
use of the following Likert-scale items: “It is best to discover grammar rules
together with other students”, “I like to discover grammar rules by myself”, “I
prefer to read or listen to texts containing new structures rather than be given rules”,
“It is best when the teacher explains grammar rules”, “I find it helpful when the
teacher uses my mother tongue to explain grammar”, “I am convinced that the use
of terminology is important in teaching grammar”, or “It helps me when demon-
stration is used in teaching grammar”. Of course, items included in questionnaires
would need in most cases to be formulated in learners’ first language and worded
without recourse to complex terminology in order to ensure ample understanding.
Also, when open-ended questions are included, students should be allowed to
provide responses in the language of their choosing.
4.3 Familiarizing Learners with Grammar Learning

Strategies
An integral part of any long-term program aimed to develop autonomy with respect
to learning foreign language grammar should be encouraging students to fall back
14 M. Pawlak
upon grammar learning strategies (GLS), an area that has been conspicuously
neglected by researchers (Cohen, 2011; Oxford, Rang Lee, & Park, 2007; Pawlak,
2009, 2012b). Strategies of this kind can be defined as “deliberate thoughts and
actions students employ for learning and getting better control over the use of
grammar structures” (Cohen & Pinilla-Herrera, 2009, p. 64), which implies that
successful application of such strategic devices stimulates the growth of explicit
knowledge of rules and the ability to employ them in real-time processing. Pawlak
(2012b), basing on general taxonomies of language learning strategies, catego-
rizations of instructional options that can be employed in FFI and previous research
findings, proposed a division of GLS into four groups, namely: (1) metacognitive
GLS, used to plan, monitor and evaluate the learning process (e.g., previewing
grammar structures to be covered in a lesson, having specific objectives in learning
grammar), (2) affective GLS, drawn upon to deal with the feelings and emotions
involved in the process of grammar learning (e.g., relaxing when experiencing
problems in understanding or using grammar features, encouraging oneself to
engage in additional practice), (3) social GLS, which involve cooperation with
others when studying or practicing grammar structures (e.g., asking the teacher to
repeat or explain a grammar point which has not been understood, practicing
grammar structures with other students), and (4) cognitive GLS, which are applied
directly in activities focusing on grammar structures.
While the first three groups are equally applicable to learning all aspects of the
TL, the last one takes account of the specificity of learning and gaining greater
control of the different dimensions of grammar, with the effect that it deserves more
thorough treatment at this point. Pawlak (2012b) subdivides such strategies into
four groups, namely: (1) cognitive GLS used in communicative tasks (e.g. trying to
use specific grammar structures in communication, reading for pleasure or watching
television to improve grammar, noticing and remembering TL features that cause
problems with getting messages across), (2) cognitive GLS for developing explicit
knowledge (e.g., paying attention to the rules provided by the teacher or course-
book, grouping grammar structures to remember them better, trying to discover
grammar rules by analyzing examples), (3) cognitive GLS for developing implicit
knowledge (e.g., listening to and reading texts containing many examples of the
targeted structure, comparing the way in which grammar is used with the learner’s
own language production, trying to use grammar rules in a meaningful context),
and (4) cognitive GLS related to error correction (e.g., listening for any feedback
that the teacher gives, trying to notice and self-correct errors in the use of grammar,
monitoring one’s spoken and written output with respect to the use of the TL
features taught). Obviously, extensive training in the use of these strategies is
needed following one of the models proposed in the literature (e.g., Chamot, 2005),
with the main principles of such strategy-based instruction (SBI) being that it
should start with metacognitive GLS, be comprehensive, direct and explicit, begin
early in foreign language education, involve numerous practice opportunities, and
rely, if need be, on the use of learners’ mother tongue (see Chamot, 2004). Since
such training would necessarily be time-consuming and in many cases needs to be
reconciled with SBI in other areas, its nature and extent need to be adjusted to the
specificity of a particular course or program.
4.4 Promoting the Use of ICT in Learning Grammar
A powerful tool in developing an autonomous approach to learning foreign

grammar is without doubt ICT, which provides learners with copious opportunities
to develop both their explicit and implicit knowledge with respect to all the
dimensions listed by Larsen-Freeman (2003), that is form, meaning and use, such
that could never be provided during language lessons. In addition, the fact that these
resources are easily accessible at any time and space, and that they can be selected
in accordance with learners’ goals, needs, learning styles and strategies makes them
particularly conducive to fostering autonomy, not only in learning grammar but all
the efforts invested in learning the target language. What needs to be emphasized,
however, is that it would perhaps be wishful thinking to assume that learners will
avail of such opportunities of their own accord or that just recommending the use of
technology will be sufficient. In fact, students have to be actively encouraged to
engage in the use of ICT in learning grammar and this could involve, among other
things:
• demonstrating to students how they can capitalize on the opportunities offered
by word processors and presentation software (the use of grammar checkers but
also enhancing awareness of their limitations, including feedback in texts pro-
duced by other learners, creating presentations devoted to grammar for
self-instruction purposes);
• training students in effective use of electronic dictionaries, whether those
available on DVDs, smartphones or online (e.g., understanding grammatical
information which they provide, taking advantage of examples of authentic use
of the targeted structures, performing activities on grammar that some dic-
tionaries contain);
• familiarizing students with the benefits of using corpora, or “(…) large collec-
tions of both spoken and written natural texts” (Reppen & Simpson-Vlach,
2010, p. 89), and the related tools in the classroom and outside (e.g., discovering
and checking typical patterns, using popular search engines for the same pur-
pose); this has to involve copious practice opportunities so that learners can
develop the necessary skills;
• promoting the use of educational software which is easily available on the
market and demonstrating how such software can be used for the benefit of
enhancing grammatical knowledge, whether explicit or implicit; even when
such programs primarily rely upon traditional exercises, their strength is the
availability of immediate, sometimes student-tailored feedback, and access to
useful reference tools;
16 M. Pawlak
• demonstrating how Internet-based resources can aid the learning of grammar,

both in relation to generic websites, where authentic written and spoken texts
can be found, enabling investigation of grammar items, and dedicated ones,
specifically intended for language learning and typically containing elements
assisting the study of grammar;
• encouraging the use of Internet communicators or virtual worlds, since syn-
chronous computer-mediated communication of this kind can allow the use of
the targeted items in real time and, if it is conducted with native-speakers or
advanced language users, can be a valuable source of corrective feedback; this
has the potential benefit of enhancing implicit knowledge in conditions when
more attentional resources are available for processing form-meaning mappings.
5 Implications and Caveats
As elucidated in the present paper, the complexity and multidimensionality of

grammar dictate that there is an obvious need to take actions intended to promote
autonomy in learning this target language subsystem. Encouraging such an
autonomous approach is also warranted in view of the fact that the degree to which
learners need to know and use grammar structures is bound to vary and the
effectiveness of the learning process is mediated by individual difference variables
which can best be accommodated by learners themselves. This said, it should be
emphasized that the ways in which this goal can and should be achieved will vary
from one class, program or even individual to another. It seems clear, for example,
that autonomy in this respect is of pivotal importance for students in foreign lan-
guages departments who are expected to master difficult grammar structures and use
them effectively in communication. On the other end of the spectrum, it is difficult
to take issue with the assumption that an autonomous approach in this area will be
of little significance for individuals who sign up for language courses with a view to
developing a basic command of the target language in order to get by in everyday
situations. It should also be stressed that the amount of autonomy is a matter of
degree, different levels of this attribute may be manifested by different learners, and
some of them, due to the beliefs they hold, may refuse to exercise self-direction in
this area, with all of this indicating that the goals of independence in learning
grammar should be realistic and compatible with the characteristics of a specific
context. The last caveat is that an autonomous approach to learning TL grammar is
by no means intended to entirely replace more traditional form-focused instruction
which is delivered by the teacher, but, rather, to complement it, thus enhancing its
effectiveness and supporting the use of grammar in communication. This is
because, while the teacher may at the end of the day be the ultimate authority for
most school learners when it comes to explaining the rules of grammar and deciding
about the ways in which grammar structures can be practiced, it is only by going
beyond classroom and homework assignments, taking advantage of the right
resources and applying appropriate learning strategies that students can fully
develop explicit knowledge and automatize it to such an extent that it can be
effortlessly used in spontaneous communication.
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A Goal-Setting Logbook as an Instrument
Fostering Learner Autonomy
Anna Klimas
Abstract Learner autonomy is a multifaceted concept and as such it is problematic

when we want to implement and propagate its premises among students. If
autonomy is advocated to be a goal of language education, it is implied that teachers
and educational institutions should attempt to foster autonomy among learners. The
focus of the article is on a goal-setting logbook as an instrument that develops
students’ positive attitudes towards autonomy. The instrument was originally used
in a longitudinal study that aimed at observing its influence on upper secondary
students’ motivation to learn English as a foreign language. Since motivation and
autonomy are closely related concepts, it has been also discovered that there seems
to be a strong connection between goal-setting and autonomy. Some positive
consequences of using the logbook were observed, such as, for example, greater
effort invested in achieving the set goals, responsibility shared between the teacher
and students, the development of metacognitive skills, and more efficient learning.
The analysis of students’ goal-setting logbooks led to developing a classification of
possible strategies of goal-attainment. It comprises four groups of different activities
ranging from controlling behavior through cooperating with others and using
various resources to employing cognitive skills.
1 Introduction
It is widely acknowledged that autonomous learners understand the purpose of their

learning, accept the responsibility for how and when they learn, and participate in
all kinds of learning activities, such as setting goals, planning, performing tasks,
and reflecting on and evaluating the learning process. Although the ability to
regulate learning seems to be natural, formal education may inhibit its development.
The greatest obstacle in encouraging students to take some responsibility for their
own learning appears to be inadequate preparation as well as unfavorable attitudes
A. Klimas (&)
“Edukacja” College of Management, Wrocław, Poland
e-mail: annaklimas@hotmail.com

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-07764-2_2
22 A. Klimas
and beliefs concerning the perceived value of such practices represented by teachers
themselves. Consequently, the issue of fostering learner autonomy in foreign lan-
guage classrooms still requires some consideration.
Language teachers can utilize a number of tools that may prove useful in pro-
moting learner autonomy, such as self-reports and diaries (Litzler, 2014),
project-based work (Errey & Schollaert, 2005) or new technologies (Hafner &
Miller, 2011), to mention just a few. Raising students’ awareness and allowing
them to take greater control over their learning are the main benefits that these
practices bring. Thus, it seems interesting to examine whether such resources are
also effective for Polish learners of English as a foreign language. The purpose of
the present paper is twofold. Firstly, it provides a brief theoretical overview of
autonomy, focusing on the role of goals and goal processes. More specifically, it
considers goals as essential elements of learner autonomy in the classroom context.
Interaction between autonomy and motivation, in turn, is one of the main reasons
for encouraging learners to be more autonomous. Obviously, developing autonomy
in formal situations cannot take place without the teacher’s engagement and this
issue is also addressed. Considering all the above-mentioned issues is helpful in
providing the rationale for the second important aim of the paper, which is to
present a goal-setting logbook as an instrument that may be used to foster autonomy
in a formal learning context. The paper also draws on the partial results of a study
during which the tool was implemented.
2 Goals Within the Framework of Learner Autonomy
Since autonomy is a widely discussed concept, it seems that we know quite a lot
about it from both theoretical and practical perspectives. It is clear, for example,
what attributes are associated with autonomous learners. There are also a number of
definitions of this concept, but most researchers concerned with this issue refer to
Holec’s (1981, p. 3) conceptualization of autonomy as “the ability to take charge of
one’s own learning”. This definition indicates that an autonomous learner needs to
decide independently or in collaboration with others about all areas of learning, that
is, selecting objectives, determining materials, tasks, methods as well as criteria of
evaluation. Little (2007) makes the point that Holec’s definition has a number of
important implications, which are also relevant to the present study. Firstly, the
development of autonomy can be initiated when learners explicitly acknowledge
the fact that the full responsibility for the learning process rests with them.
Secondly, autonomous learners consciously make use of reflection, analysis and
evaluation skills; in addition, they are also able and willing to make use of their
knowledge and skills in situations different from learning itself. What is more, Little
(2007) points out that there is an affective dimension to autonomy, which means
that motivation is a powerful factor determining actual autonomous behaviors. We
are not able to fully understand autonomy if we fail to admit that there is a natural
A Goal-Setting Logbook as an Instrument … 23
bond between an individual’s degree of independence and the desire to act in this
way, the level of persistence, and positive attitudes.
It is widely recognized that motivation is a goal-directed activity (cf. Gardner,
2010; Pintrich & Schunk, 2002). Goals are basic defining attributes of human
actions and they constitute an answer to the question of why an individual wants to
learn. Goals as such are complex and varied, so there are many ambiguities about
the properties of goals and the way in which they are mentally represented. In the
field of psychology, the impact of goals on people’s performance and achievement
can be determined by taking into account the very nature of goals. For example, as
Lee, Locke, and Latham (1989) claim, goals have two primary attributes, content
and intensity, which are not always easy to separate. Goal content refers to what
should be achieved. Thus, goals can be described in terms of four properties:
specificity (clear and specific goals are associated with generating higher levels of
performance and fostering positive attitudes towards the activity), difficulty (goals
which are too difficult and unreachable are often abandoned), complexity (goals are
hierarchically organized), and conflict (there are various reasons for goal conflict,
e.g., time and ability constraints, and discrepancy between personal and assigned
goals). Goal intensity, in turn, represents the process of setting and accomplishing
the goal, and it is analyzed along such dimensions as commitment, perception of the
goal’s importance, and the cognitive processes involved in goal attainment.
Additionally, other goal characteristics have been proposed: goal proximity
(short-term and long-term goals), the level of abstraction (concrete and
symbolic/abstract goals), and goal source (self-set and assigned goals).
Benson (2011) also draws our attention to the place of goals in autonomous
learning. Students may control their learning at three interdependent levels. The first
level, control over learning management, should be understood in terms of
strategies that students employ in order to plan, organize and evaluate their
learning. Goals are reference points in all these activities. At this level, control over
learning is most directly observable, but stating what learners should be able to do
is not enough; this is how the next level of control becomes important. Thus,
control over cognitive processes is concerned with the psychology of learning, that
is, particular mental processes associated with the idea of control. The areas that
have been emphasized to play a crucial role here are attention (the learner’s active
intellectual engagement with incoming information), reflection (exploring one’s
experiences) and metacognitive knowledge (awareness of how to learn). The last
element of learner control, that is, control over learning content, implies a capacity
as well as the right to set and evaluate one’s own learning goals. In fact, this
assumption is not new as it was Wang and Peverly (1986) who observed that a
characteristic feature of autonomous learners is the ability to identify goals, for-
mulate their own objectives, and change aims to suit their own learning interests
and needs. Hence, learner control over the content seems to be fundamental to
autonomy (Benson, 2011). Everything a student wants to achieve is done in relation
to specific goals, and if they are self-determined, the learning process becomes an
authentic and dynamic experience, because it is the learner’s own.
24 A. Klimas
3 Interaction Between Autonomy and Motivation
The relationship between autonomy and motivation is well established as both

concepts share some features, such as learner independence, responsibility, choice,
decision-making, or critical reflection (Dam, 2003; Dickinson, 1995; Spratt, 2002;
Ushioda, 2003).
The interaction between autonomy and motivation becomes readily visible when
we take into account the fact that learners have to harmonize multiple goals which,
according to Ushioda (2003), include personal needs, teacher requirements, cur-
ricular demands, and essential social relations with peers. The last aspect of the
classroom environment may pose a considerable threat to teenage learners as the
influence of social goals on academic achievements is substantial (Wentzel, 1999).
In other words, in a typical classroom there is a variety of conflicting goals which
may interfere with the development of motivation and simultaneously suppress the
exercise of autonomy. If individual, interpersonal, and pedagogical goals are sup-
posed to be coordinated, “learners must be brought to address the issue of moti-
vation and to negotiate a framework for classroom learning that they can
collectively and individually endorse. In short, there must be scope for autonomy”
(Ushioda, 2003, p. 95).
This interdependence of both concepts is also well explained by the theory of
self-determination (Deci & Ryan, 2002). It states that three basic needs underlie our
functioning, and particularly our intrinsic motivation. These are the need for
competence (developing and using skills to be efficient in interaction with others,
tasks, and the environment), the need for autonomy (independence in deciding what
to do and how to do it), and the need for relatedness (a sense of belonging). Hence
self-determination is felt when an individual has a choice in the initiation and
regulation of his or her actions. Understandably, self-regulation is important for
most people; that is why we look for optimal stimulation and challenging activities.
The question arises whether anything can be done to preserve and strengthen the
link between motivation and the sense of autonomy in the classroom. Individual
involvement in decision-making seems to offer a solution (Ushioda, 2003). Thus,
providing learners with opportunities to establish personal goals should not be
undervalued. When students are engaged in setting short-term goals, they gain a
clearer perception of themselves as competent agents. This belief, called efficacy
expectation, is seen as the major determinant of goal-setting, activity choice, effort,
and persistence (Bandura & Locke, 2003). The goals, however, cannot be too
demanding so as not to undermine intrinsic motivation. Moreover, Ushioda (2003)
argues that learners will accept the assigned goals if their autonomy is supported,
that is, there is some room for negotiation, and their need for self-determination is
recognized. In other words, learners should understand that the most important
source of motivation is inside them.
4 Autonomy in the Classroom Context
Apart from theoretical considerations, it is essential to take into account the ped-
agogical perspective on learner autonomy. As Little (e.g., 1999, 2004, 2007) has
repeatedly argued, the development of autonomy should be guided by three uni-
versal principles. The first of them refers to learner involvement or empowerment. It
is done by encouraging students to become personally and collectively responsible
as well as by creating appropriate conditions for students so that they are more
involved. Such actions prove to be successful depending on the time invested and
the learning skills developed by learners. The second principle, which is related to
metacognitive skills, is called learner reflection. Students should be stimulated to
apply critical thinking to planning, monitoring and evaluating their learning. The
key element here is self-assessment, with the emphasis laid on identifying weak and
strong points. Finally, the third principle, appropriate target language use, reminds
us about the necessity of using the target language as the preferred medium of
classroom communication. In other words, teachers must direct interaction among
students in such a way so as to exploit their language potential. This, in turn, will
foster autonomy in language use. Little (2004) indicates that all three principles are
clearly interdependent. In other words, learners will not adopt a responsible attitude
unless their thinking is guided by deep and critical reflection, and, what is more,
students will be positive about language learning on condition that they have the
chance to use the target language in a meaningful way.
Discussing autonomy from a practical perspective also necessitates a description
of the teacher’s responsibilities in this respect. The development of learner
autonomy is a gradual and long-lasting process, so it takes some perseverance and
skills to reach the final stage of this process. Although the change of thinking and
attitudes takes place within a learner, it would not be possible without the teacher’s
guidance. Consequently, Dam (2003) indicates that the teacher occupies a pivotal
role in promoting autonomy in foreign language classrooms. When it comes to
teachers’ responsibilities, it seems reasonable to expect that they will be involved in
a number of activities (Dam, 2003). First of all, teachers are responsible for com-
municating expectations, such as curricular objectives or task requirements, in a
clear way. Learners should also be provided with appropriate activities and given
choice in organizing work, which will enable them to reach previously assigned
goals as well as their personal goals. Secondly, teachers are expected to document
learners’ choices by means of special instruments (e.g., logbooks or portfolios),
which also fulfill the useful function of self-assessment. Finally, teachers should
raise learners’ awareness of all the elements of the learning process, and the best
way to do it is by initiating and encouraging discussions among learners as well as
between the teacher and students. This list of the teacher’s responsibilities is
probably not exhaustive; however, it constitutes an important point of reference
since it is formulated in agreement with the three pedagogical principles (cf. Little,
2004).
26 A. Klimas
5 The Study
5.1 Objectives
Goals seem to be important ingredients of the teaching-learning process. However,

they do not function at the level of students’ consciousness because learners are
simply not aware of the usefulness of such practices (Klimas, 2010). An average
secondary school student has some problems with articulating his or her own goals.
Noticing and understanding the teacher’s and peers’ objectives is even more
problematic. In addition, learners often fail to consider short-term goals as vital
reference points in the language learning process. Originally, this study tried to
clarify if the awareness of learning goals that students are required to pursue has a
beneficial effect on their motivation and achievement. However, as there is a strong
connection between motivation and autonomy, it was observed that some positive
attitudes towards autonomous language learning were adopted by the students who
participated in the goal-setting procedure. Therefore, it seemed justified to explore
the issue in more detail. Consequently, the major focus in this study was on the link
between goal-setting and learner autonomy. The following research questions were
addressed:
1. Does the goal-setting procedure have any influence on shaping students’ posi-
tive attitudes towards autonomous language learning?
2. How does the goal-setting procedure foster autonomy among upper secondary
school students?
5.2 Participants
The participants were 30 students (19 females and 11 males) in two classes in one
of the upper-secondary schools in Wrocław. They were all in the second grade (17–
18 years of age). English was a compulsory school subject for them, with three
hours of instruction a week. Their level of language proficiency was
pre-intermediate.
5.3 Instrument
The instrument employed in the research project was a goal-setting logbook (see the
Appendix). It was developed specifically for the purpose of the study investigating
the effectiveness of the goal-setting procedure; hence, all the instructions as well as
the content of the logbook were in Polish to ensure that the instrument was reliable.
The logbook was divided into two parts, one of which was to be completed at the
beginning of the week. The other one was to be filled in after the period assigned
for goal pursuit. It was designed in the form of a chart divided into six columns. In
the first one, the subjects could see the goals specified for one week of study. This
part was completed by the teacher on the basis of syllabus requirements.
Additionally, the students were regularly and strongly encouraged to suggest and
write down their own goals. The remaining columns in the first part were filled in
by the participants of the study with the following information: the importance they
attach to particular goals (on the scale from 5 [very important] to 1 [irrelevant]),
actions they were going to take in order to achieve the goals, possible obstacles that
might occur on the way towards the goal and methods that could be employed to
deal with them. The second part of the instrument contained an evaluation com-
ponent of the logbook. Hence, the participants were asked to assess the goal-setting
process by indicating the degree of goal achievement, which was expressed as
percentages, and making comments on what happened during the whole week. The
logbook is thus a kind of a semi-structured instrument whose main aims are to keep
learners informed of what was happening in the classroom, share some responsi-
bility with them and develop their reflective thinking skills.
5.4 Procedure
The goal-setting procedure was based on the belief that goal-setting is a powerful
method of arousing and, what seems to be even more important, sustaining stu-
dents’ motivation to learn English in the school context. This assumption, in turn,
was to be ensured by a longitudinal character of the research. The participants were
asked to hold goal-setting as well as goal evaluation sessions on a regular basis, that
is once a week, throughout the whole school year.
All the goals included in the procedure were determined on the basis of the
syllabus, so they included various language learning objectives. What is more,
certain goal features were essential to the successful completion of the project.
Consequently, the goals were carefully selected and described as short-term (one
week assigned for reaching the goals), concrete (referring to specific skills), realistic
(adjusted to students’ level and abilities) and reachable (representing an optimal
challenge). Providing properly defined goals, however, is not enough to guarantee
that they are achieved. For this reason, once the initial goal-setting was done and the
goals were introduced, the participants were asked to develop a plan of action. They
did it individually by completing the third column in their goal-setting logbooks.
The data collected in this way were analyzed in terms of strategies the participants
employed and which helped them become more engaged in their own learning
process.
28 A. Klimas
5.5 Results and Comments
As the main study was designed to obtain the data on motivational influences of the
goal-setting procedure, it was necessary to carry out supplementary qualitative
analysis of the initial results in order to tap into the processes associated with
autonomy. For the purpose of this paper, only those data are taken into account. In
this section, the results concerning the stage of goal implementation will be pre-
sented and analyzed.
First of all, the degree of goal acceptance was assessed by calculating the mean
results for goal importance (the second column in the logbook). Goals were rated
unfavorably in very few cases, and the mean value of goal acceptance (M = 4.26)
indicates that the students acknowledged the suggested objectives. Nevertheless, at
the beginning of the study, it turned out that the students had problems with
establishing the procedures for goal implementation because they lacked certain
cognitive and metacognitive skills. In other words, they needed to reflect on their
learning more deeply. The role of the teacher was thus to clarify how it could be
done. Brainstorming students’ ideas proved very useful as it allowed them to invent
and verbalize some possible ways of pursuing their goals. In the course of time, the
participants were given an option not to complete this part of the logbook since they
were becoming increasingly familiar with the planning stage. Hence, the frequen-
cies of particular actions cannot be reported.
Having analyzed the logbooks, it was possible to distinguish 39 different actions
that could lead to goal attainment. On this basis, certain groups of strategies were
suggested. However, the nature of this classification does not have any formal
character. A preliminary analysis of students’ logbooks revealed two basic trends.
In particular, one way of achieving a goal was concerned with actions that are taken
during English classes, whereas the other one was associated with actions employed
outside the classroom. Implementation of some goals required both approaches;
consequently, this distinction can only be treated as an additional piece of infor-
mation. A proper classification into four groups is presented below, and it is based
on the translation of the ideas given by the students.
The first group includes actions connected with a common conceptualization of
what effective learning at school involves. What is more, the actions are also
considered as important features of an autonomous learner. Hence, such phenomena
as attention, monitoring and control of one’s own behavior were observed. The
students literally started to take charge of their learning. Interestingly, these
activities were mentioned the most often, for they seem to be natural predecessors
of achieving academic goals. The students named the following actions:
• active participation in particular tasks;
• listening carefully to and following the teacher’s instructions;
• paying attention to what is happening in the classroom;
• staying focused throughout the whole lesson;
• taking notes;
• trying hard to understand;
• doing everything that has to be done to complete a task;

• trying to calm down;
• working systematically;
• doing homework;
• checking what has been done during classes (in the case of an absence);
• using self-motivating techniques such as encouraging oneself.
The second group comprises activities that share an element of cooperation and
interaction with others, which is obviously crucial for autonomous language
learning. Due to the fact that we are social beings, we depend on other people for
our exercise of autonomy. Therefore, social interaction is indispensable in devel-
oping language skills and autonomy at the same time. The participants of the study
appear to have acknowledged this important dimension of language learning by
naming those strategies which facilitate using the language in real communication
with other people in and outside the classroom. The actions in this group included:
• cooperating with other students;
• making use of peers’ knowledge;
• helping other students (in group activities);
• asking confirmation and comprehension check questions;
• having conversations in English outside school;
• using English as much as possible during classes;
• studying and revising with a friend or a family member;
• using every opportunity to speak English;
• expressing one’s opinions freely in English.
The third group of activities that can lead to goal attainment is based on various
resources available to learners. The students noted that some things can serve as
useful means to bring them closer to accomplishing the goals. In this way, they
adopted an active attitude that, undoubtedly, supports goal attainment and is a
manifestation of autonomy. The participants enumerated the following actions:
• looking for information on the Internet or in reference books;
• using dictionaries;
• reading authentic texts;
• using the coursebook and its components (e.g., CDs or a dedicated website) for
revision and independent learning.
The last group features methods of goal attainment associated with such
strategies as practicing, reasoning and analyzing. The development of autonomy is
closely associated with mastering skills which enable learners to be independent
and effective. This list of actions is the longest and the choice of possible activities
one can engage in is quite extensive. Thus, they can be applied to all kinds of
academic goals as they focus on the improvement of all language areas:
• memorizing new words by means of different techniques;
• revising new vocabulary after each lesson;
30 A. Klimas
• redoing the most difficult tasks and exercises;

• trying to make use of what one already knows;
• reminding oneself of what one already knows;
• trying to understand and analyze English while watching TV, listening to music
and playing computer games;
• analyzing grammar rules;
• translating texts from English into Polish;
• using exam strategies to complete a task;
• revising necessary words/grammar structures before doing the task;
• practicing at home;
• reading the same text several times;
• listening carefully to how the words are pronounced;
• trying to imitate native pronunciation;
• using new vocabulary in writing assignments and speaking;
• writing letters, e-mails and messages in English;
• analyzing examples of written assignments;
• preparing arguments in advance to feel confident about participating in a
discussion;
• talking to oneself in English.
As can be seen from the above classification of goal attainment strategies, the
students who participated in the procedure started to exhibit many traits of auton-
omous learners, such as being more self-aware and reflective as well as showing
greater responsibility not only for themselves but also for others, displaying ini-
tiative, and engaging in metacognitive and strategic thinking. In addition, the
logbook assisted the students with accepting the goals assigned by the teacher, and
helped them to identify their own objectives and to keep a written record of their
progress towards achieving them. The stage of the goal-setting intervention that is
referred to in the paper was found to be very useful as it kept the students informed
about the considerable amount of intensive work that has to be done in order to
achieve all the goals. The participants became notably conscious of what they are
able to do in order to achieve the goals and seemed to understand how much
depended only on them. The positive outcomes could be observed on a number of
levels. First of all, the role of effort could be strengthened, regulated, and sustained.
The very fact of inventing different ways and methods of goal achievement made
the participants comprehend that it was their hard work that made them better
language learners and that they can be personally responsible for their success.
What is more, the students started to appreciate their own role in the language
classroom due to the fact that their ideas, opinions, and needs could be openly
communicated and considered. In this way, the responsibility for the learning
process was shared between the teacher and her students.
6 Conclusions
Fostering learner autonomy is a gradual process and although finding fully

autonomous students in Polish secondary schools may be difficult or even impos-
sible, “some degree of autonomy is a fact of life, for in the final analysis, if any
learning is to take place, the learners must do it for themselves” (Nunan, 1997,
p. 202). We also need to realize that teachers play a crucial role in introducing
students to autonomy, and to this end they have a number of techniques at their
disposal. Goal-setting, for example, is an effective strategy and, as the results of the
study indicate, it seems especially beneficial from the perspective of raising stu-
dents’ awareness.
As has already been mentioned, the instrument presented in the paper was
originally designed to examine the influence of goal-setting on students’ motiva-
tion. The positive relationship between the two variables was discovered and
confirmed (Klimas, 2010). However, using the logbook allowed the teacher not
only to arouse and sustain motivation to learn English but also to observe some
gains in terms of preparing the participants for becoming more autonomous.
A motivated learner is a successful learner, so our fundamental need for autonomy
is more likely to be satisfied. The effects of the goal-setting procedure were
far-reaching and positive because they brought a change in students’ thinking and
behavior. At the same time, the researcher is aware of the fact that the logbook was
not employed as a teaching aid and a tool for improving students’ language skills
since its role was limited to collecting empirical data. In this way, one of the
pedagogical principles for the development of learner autonomy, that is, using the
target language as the main medium of instruction (Little, 2004), was violated.
Undeniably, the whole experience could have been enhanced by asking students to
use English while completing the logbook.
To sum up, as this example shows, language learning in the classroom can bring
about positive results if students’ attitudes, formed on the basis of stimulating and
revealing experience, are also favorable. Formal education does not necessarily con-
strain the development of students’ independence and ability to take charge of one’s
learning. On the contrary, classrooms are perfect places to equip learners with necessary
skills and prepare them for lifelong learning. Teachers need to make sure that learners
identify with the language, consider it to be important, and understand their own active
role in the learning process. Of course, letting students pursue their own goals will
undoubtedly transform learning into more authentic and autonomous experience.
Appendix: Goal-Setting Logbook
I. The table below lists goals that should be achieved within a week. Add to them
your own goals that you would like to achieve. Indicate the importance of each
goal, using the following scale: 5—a very important goal for me; 4—an important
32 A. Klimas
goal for me; 3—it is difficult to say how important the goal is for me; 2—an
unimportant goal for me; 1—a goal that is irrelevant to me. In the column labeled
Activities, write down what you are planning to do to achieve these goals. Think
about the problems you can come across when trying to achieve these goals and
how you can get around them.
Goals Importance Activities Possible problems and ways of overcoming them

1.
2.
3.
II. The time for implementing the goals has passed and it is necessary to evaluate
this process. Indicate in the table the appropriate column: 100 %—the goal has
been achieved in its entirety; 75 %—the goal has almost been achieved in its
entirety but I am not fully satisfied; 50 %—the goal has been achieved only in
part; 25 %—the goal has been achieved only marginally; 0 %—the goal has
not been achieved or I have not tried to achieve it. In the column labeled
Comments write down who or what was helpful in the achievement of the goal
or what prevented you from achieving it.
Assessment of goal achievement Comments

100 % 75 % 50 % 25 % 0%
1.
2.
3.
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Simulation as a Strategy for Enhancing
Learner Autonomy in Developing
Communicative Competence in ESP
Zdeňka Schormová
Abstract This paper looks at learning by performing practical tasks, which

positively affects learners’ cognitive skills and gives them hands-on experience in the
development of both communicative and social skills. Simulation as an instructional
technique in foreign language teaching possesses high potential for developing both
of these sets of skills. As it embodies the principles of communicative language
teaching, it works well if it becomes a regular component of the language learning
process. What is more, it increases learner motivation by making students feel in
control of their own learning and enables to see the practical application of what they
are learning. As a result, a simulation can be a powerful tool for supporting learner
autonomy. The paper discusses the structure and design of simulations, offers
suggestions concerning the ways of testing and evaluating learners’ performance in
simulation tasks, and provides practical examples of simulations that can be used to
foster autonomous learning of tertiary nursing and paramedic students.
1 Introduction
The development of communicative competence has become one of the main goals
of foreign language instruction in the case of tertiary vocational learners. Their use of
a foreign language is supposed to be highly practical, as manifested by the inclusion
of specialized vocabulary, as well as realistic meaning that needs to encompass
numerous social skills in performing communicative tasks reflecting their profession.
The techniques and strategies generally employed with tertiary learners often do not
sufficiently support learner autonomy and do not promote active learning. Therefore,
there is a need for researching and experimenting with strategies, techniques and
methods which would encourage active learner participation in the language learning
process. What is needed is a change in teacher and learner roles, which would result
in a shift towards making learners more responsible, active, independent and
Z. Schormová (&)
Masaryk University, Faculty of Sports Studies, Brno, Czech Republic
e-mail: 94034@mail.muni.cz

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-07764-2_3
36 Z. Schormová
autonomous controllers of their learning progress. For this reason, teachers have to
look for ways in which such a change can be implemented, being confronted with
questions how to achieve that goal, what methods and techniques should be used, and
whether these methods and techniques will work in a real learning environment.
In recent years there has been a marked emphasis on supporting learner
autonomy with the help of computers, on-line learning platforms such as Moodle,
e-learning and distance learning courses. But what should be done if learners’
communicative competence needs to be developed? Do computers have adequate
potential to facilitate this goal? Communication requires interaction, real interper-
sonal contacts and dealing with real problems of the real world in real social
situations. How is it possible to bring these conditions into the classroom? Can
learners be provided with the opportunity to develop communicative competence in
a setting close to reality? This paper focuses on a simulation as an instructional
technique that can be instrumental in developing communicative competence in a
natural and practical way, creating conditions in which students can make use of
their learning strategies, language skills, experience, creativity, social skills and
cultural knowledge in a safe and purposeful manner. It also demonstrates how the
use of simulation can support learner autonomy and significantly change the roles
of the teacher and learners in the process of foreign language learning. Yet another
issue concerns ways of motivating learners so that they will adopt an active role in
developing their communicative skills, and giving them reasons for undertaking the
challenge. Simulation seems to be a powerful engine of motivation in language
learning. Learners usually like using simulations as activating and motivating tools
in their learning process. The discussion in this paper focuses on the employment of
simulation in teaching a foreign language to tertiary nursing and paramedic students
who need specific, socially and culturally appropriate communicative skills in
medical English for their future professions.
2 Simulation
2.1 Definition of Simulation
According to Jones (1982), a simulation constitutes an event and as such it cannot

be taught. To understand this statement, a short explanation is necessary. An
activity is considered to be the basic element of simulation. It represents real steps
of participants immersed in functional roles in which they have to deal with a set
task in a simulated environment. This activity or activities are in progress for a
period of time. During this period the event changes due to changes in the behavior
and performance of participants, which results in a simulated event.
Simulation as a Strategy for Enhancing Learner Autonomy … 37
A simulation is not a teaching process, but a learning one. The teacher functions
as a facilitator who stands outside the event and does not interfere in it. He steps
back and the traditional teaching environment disappears only to be replaced by an
experiential learning process. Students who become participants take an active part
in their own learning and by means of interaction with others they learn by acting.
What is more, they employ their skills, experience and cognitive functions related
not only to one area of their knowledge but to a number of such areas. Learners
become more autonomous. They perform their tasks in the area in which the
simulation is used for developing communicative competence as well as in
social-cultural and interpersonal domains.
A simulation contains three essential elements, that is reality of function, sim-
ulated environment and structure. Reality of function represents what people do,
say and think. They enter a simulation both mentally and functionally and try to do
their best to complete their tasks and perform their obligations within a set situation.
There is no playing in a simulation. The environment for a simulation has to be
created for classroom purposes; there is no contact between the participants and the
real world outside. This is the reason why a simulation is safe. The outside world
remains untouched and the mistakes of participants cannot cause any harm.
A simulation needs a structure built up around one or more tasks. The necessary
facts are given to the participants; they do not invent them (Jones, 1982).
Various definitions of simulation have been proposed. One of the first definitions
states that “[a] simulation is reality of function in a simulated and structured
environment” (Jones, 1982). Hyland (1993) provides a similar definition,
explaining that “[a] simulation is a problem-driven activity that occurs in a clearly
described realistic setting”. Ladousse (1987) shares Jones’s (1982) view that that a
simulation is an event but also argues that role-playing is always involved in a
simulation, adding that it is an event in which participants have clearly defined
types of roles. A simulation is conventionally viewed as a technique, technology, or
a methodology (Crookall & Saunders, 1989), and some researchers consider it to be
a strategy. For the purpose of this paper the terms strategy, technique and method
are used interchangeably since a simulation has characteristics of all of these.
2.2 The Structure of a Simulation
Any simulation consists of four phases: preparation, introduction, activity and

debriefing (Hyland, 1993). The preparatory phase is implemented by a facilitator
who diagnoses the needs, interests and skills of the participants and chooses the
form of a simulation, which can be oral, written or a combination of the two. He or
she also ensures the organization of the necessary resources, preferably character-
ized by a high level of authenticity, finds classrooms necessary for the simulation,
38 Z. Schormová
and also makes the participants familiar with the technique, explains how it works
and encourages students’ self-confidence in its implementation. The introductory
phase is controlled by the facilitator. Participants are given the simulation task, role
cards and all the necessary information to be able to actively take over organization
and the process of running it. The most important phase of a simulation is the
simulation itself or the activity that it involves. Participants are responsible for its
organization, distribution of roles as well as active contribution to the task and
cooperation in its completion. They engage in discussions in pairs or groups and
suggest solutions to reach a compromise. They prepare written or oral presentations
of the outcomes or optimum solutions if the simulation requires them. The facili-
tator remains on the sidelines during this phase, acting as an observer and not
interfering in the progress of the simulation. Debriefing is a very important part of
the procedure which corresponds to the self-evaluating process in the development
of learner autonomy and necessitates cooperation of both the participants and the
facilitator. At this stage, they discuss the tactics used, the success in completing the
task by each group, quality of cooperation, the cultural aspects tackled and prob-
lems faced during the simulation. Such debriefing is necessary and useful. From the
point of view of language assessment, two aspects need to be considered. If the
facilitator does not want to discourage participants, the best way is to monitor
interactions for the mistakes made, but deal with them later. This could be done by
incorporating corrective feedback into other activities in the lessons to follow,
sometimes not even connecting them with performance of the simulation, especially
if it was employed for the first time. This will allow the participants to experience
the freedom of communicating by any possible means and demonstrate that they
can complete tasks even in spite of target language deficits. A totally opposite
approach can be adopted with simulations used, for example, in the learning process
of future language teachers or in the case of experienced students who have already
mastered the simulation technique. In this case, the danger that an emphasis on
language problems will discourage learners and reduce their motivation is much
lower. It is the facilitator who should make such a decision since he or she has all
the relevant information about the participants and is also aware of the aims of the
simulation.
2.3 The Design of a Simulation
In designing a simulation, it is useful to follow a predetermined structure, partic-

ularly when the aim is to create a database of ready-to-use simulations. Two
examples of simulations for nursing and paramedic students are provided in Figs. 1
and 2, respectively. In both cases, the structure suggested by Ladousse (1987) is
followed.
Simulation task 1
Getting informed consent from a patient with hearing difficulties
FACILITATOR’S MANUAL
TOPIC Getting informed consent.

Explaining the procedure.
Dealing with handicapped patient.
LEVEL A2-B1 CEFR upwards.
TIME 2 lessons (each 45 minutes long) including follow-up discussion and

debriefing.
AIM To develop communicative competencein English for Specific Purposes Medical

English.
Linguistic competence: integrating practical usage of gastrointestinal
vocabulary in context, explaining the process, asking and answering
questions, compensation strategies, practicing oral reports.
Sociolinguistic competence: dealing with a handicapped person in the
hospital, use of socially aware language, communication with people with
hearing difficulties, using body language and alternative ways of
expressing what you need.
Pragmatic competence: deciding how to approach the patient, evaluating
possibilities, discussion, positives and negatives.
LANGUAGE Language skills integrated: speaking and listening.

Functions: searching for specific information, discussing, compiling and
organizing it, explaining the process.
Vocabulary: gastroenterology, explaining a procedure and examination.
ORGANISATION Classroom with access to the Internet (90 minutes).

PLACE Working in pairs is expected during simulation.
FORM
PREPARATION Make enough photocopies of fact-sheet and task cards 1, 2 and 3 (one for
each pair).
Ensure access to computers, library, overhead projector and photocopier,
sheets of paper for the lesson.
WARM -UP Brief discussion of the most common gastrointestinal problems, methods
Fig. 1 Example of a simulation task for general nurses (Schormová, 2014)

40 Z. Schormová
of examination and instruments needed with the class. Ask about

experience in dealing with people with hearing difficulties.
PROCEDURE Instructions:
1. Tell participants they are in the gastrointestinal department for
outpatients and distribute fact-sheet and task card 1.
2. Make sure they all understand the facts.
3. Tell participants they are staff nurses in the gastrointestinal
department for outpatients and distribute fact-sheet and task card
2.
4. Introduce yourself as Doctor Weston who will be informed at the
end of the simulation about the approaches chosen.
5. Let participants divide themselves into pairs (with one group of 3
if there is an odd number).
6. Start the activity, give participants 45 minutes; after that pairs
will introduce their solution, suggest possible complications and
describe what they will need and why they chose the proposed
solution.
7. Distribute factsheet and task card 3.
8. Devote 30 minutes to presentations and 15 minutes to debriefing
– discuss the chosen possibilities and strategies taken.
9. Monitor participants’ progress during simulation and debriefing.
FOLLOW-UP Ask participants if they had enough information to complete the task.
Discuss which pair was the most creative and which the most practical in
their proposals.
REMARKS Access to the Internet can be helpful if participants want to clear up some
aspects of the procedures.
All activities and debriefing are carried out in English.
VARIATIONS Activity can be adapted for blind patients, patients with learning
disabilities and elderly patients.
Fig. 1 (continued)
PARTICIPANTS’ MANUAL
Fact-sheet and task card 1: in pairs
Patient information:
Mrs. Kelloggs is 53 and she has come to the hospital with stomach aches and pains today. Her
present symptoms are cramps, vomiting, bloating and she has lost her appetite. The Doctor has
examined her and decided that it will be necessary to do an invasive examination – a gastroscopy –
which will be done tomorrow. Written informed consent is needed from the patient.
But Mrs. Kelloggs is handicapped and she has had hearing difficulties for all her life. She is deaf in
her left ear and partially deaf in the right ear. She wears a hearing aid and cannot speak very
clearly. She can lip-read quite well but has very little experience with a medical environment so it
is fair to expect that she will not be able to understand medical terms. She is a widow, lives alone
and has no relatives.
She was asked to come tomorrow at 10.15 to see Doctor Weston. The Doctor told her that she
mustn’t eat anything for the 12 hours before the examination. Gastroscopy will be undertaken if
she signs an informed consent.
Collect fact-sheet and task card 2 from the facilitator.

You are a staff nurse in the gastrointestinal department for outpatients. You and your colleague
have been told to collect an informed consent form from Mrs. Kelloggs for an invasive examination
– a gastroscopy. Without the consent the procedure cannot be carried out. It is essential to explain
the procedure in detail to the patient, making sure she understands everything and answering all
her questions before signing the informed consent. It is essential to deal with her handicap.
Tomorrow at 10.15 you will have 30 minutes to get the informed consent. You and your colleague
are responsible. Decide together what strategy you will use and what you will need, because you
have to prepare and organize everything today. Prepare an explanation of all the instruments
needed, process and choose an approach which will work with a deaf patient. If you are unsure
about the procedure, you can consult necessary books or the Internet. Try to suggest all the
possibilities a hospital has at its disposal should the chosen approach not work. Predict the possible
complications and give advice about their prevention.
Before the end of today’s shift Doctor Weston (represented by the facilitator) wants to be informed
about your solutions and receive a detailed description of how it will be achieved and what
information you are going to give to the patient. Prepare a detailed oral report and show what you
have prepared.
The time limit for this activity is 45 minutes.
Collect a fact-sheet and task card 3 from the facilitator.

Report to Doctor Weston in detail: how are you going to explain everything to the patient. Explain
how you can be sure the patient understands and you have an informed consent for the procedure.
The time limit for this activity is 30 minutes.
Fig. 1 (continued)
42 Z. Schormová
Simulation task 2
Winning a European Union (EU) grant for first aid course with practical demonstrations
for general public
FACILITATOR’S MANUAL
TOPIC First aid.
Educating the public in first aid.
LEVEL A2-B1 CEFR upwards.
TIME 2 lessons (each 45 minutes long) including follow-up discussion and
debriefing.
AIM To develop communicative competence in spoken and written English for
Specific Purposes – Medical English in team work.
Linguistic competence: practicing instructions, orders, describing process,
designing written material – information card, developing usage of first
aid vocabulary, logical explanation of procedures and functions of related
equipment, writing a project.
Sociolinguistic competence: designing a course for the general public,
assessing their needs, adapting knowledge and level of understanding to
professional explanations, answering lay questions clearly, using
language which general public can understand.
Pragmatic competence: expressing and discussing suggestions with
emphasis on coherence and cohesion, understanding instructions,
developing fluency, organizing information, expressing disagreement.
LANGUAGE Language skills integrated: speaking, listening, writing and reading.
Functions: practicing team roles, discussing distribution of tasks,
cooperation, expressing an opinion, organizing tasks, simultaneous
demonstration and explanation, answering unexpected questions, working
under time pressure.
Vocabulary: first aid, activity verbs, first aid equipment.
ORGANISATION Ordinary classroom (45 minutes).
PLACE First aid training room with manikins-dummies (45 minutes).
FORM Working in two teams which will organize their own distribution of tasks
and outcomes.
PREPARATION Make enough photocopies of the fact-sheet and task card 1, 2 and 3 for
both teams.
Fig. 2 Example of simulation task for paramedic students (Schormová, 2014)

Ensure access to computers and a first aid manual.

Ensure access to a paramedic training room with both an adult and child
dummy and first-aid equipment.
WARM-UP Discuss methods of teaching other people something practical in a logical
way, identifying what can be difficult and what to avoid in such
situations.
PROCEDURE Instructions:
1. Let participants divide themselves into two teams of equal
number and explain they represent teams from two different first-
aid departments. As a representative of an EU grant agency tell
them about the grant and distribute the fact-sheet and task card 1
for each team to read.
2. Check that all participants understand the contents of the fact-
sheet and task card 1.
3. Let participants organize their functional roles within their team
and elect a time keeper.
4. Distribute the fact-sheet along with task card 2 and 3.
5. Start the activity; tell the teams they will take turns sharing
practical demonstrations in 25 minutes.
6. Let participants organize the presentation by themselves.
7. As a grant agency representative you can be consulted about the
requirements. Be ready to answer whatever questions the groups
may ask of you.
8. Monitor teamwork, task distribution, demonstration, explanation,
creativity and meeting the requirements.
9. Organize a discussion as a follow-up and debriefing once the task
is complete. Allow the participants to objectively choose which
demonstration gave a better impression overall and thus who
deserves to win the grant and why.
FOLLOW-UP Discuss and check if there were any serious factual mistakes in the first-
aid displayed and which ideas were interesting and people-friendly.
REMARKS Computers should only be used for consultation when in doubt.
All activities and demonstrations are carried out in English.
VARIATIONS First aid tasks can be altered to enable a wider range of training activities.
Several teams can take part if the class is large.
Fig. 2 (continued)
44 Z. Schormová
PARTICIPANTS’ MANUAL
Fact-sheet and task card 1: in each team
There is a call from the EU to submit a project which could bring a reasonable sum of money to
your first-aid department in the form of a new fully equipped ambulance. However, the grant will
only be won by one institution on the basis of a competition involving preparation of a practical
first-aid course for the general public complete with explanations, demonstrations and training on
dummies. Your boss is very keen on winning this grant for your department.
Information from the call:

The aim of the course will be to:
• Reduce accidents involving children both at home and in sporting activities.
• Avoid driver panic at the scene of an accident.
• Provide basic first-aid at home.
• Help passers-by or homeless person in need whilst not putting yourself at risk.
The general public will be mostly mothers on maternity leave, drivers, bikers, do-it-yourself people
and teachers. They all have very little first-aid experience. The course will be free for participants
as your institution will be fully covered by the grant.
There are several requirements:
• The course must be public-friendly – easy to understand and highly demonstrative.
• The course has to be highly professional.
• Educational methods cannot be very complicated.
• It needs to be engaging and educational for the participants.

According to the call, the course should cover these topics.
• Biker’s accident on the cycle track.
• Scalding of a child by a hot soup in the home.
• Garden accidents with a saw and axe.
• Lady giving birth in the park.
• Homeless person set on fire by hooligans in the street.
• Seeing an accident on the road while driving.
Your team wants to win the grant. Do your best. Distribute the tasks, design it well and carefully
plan the demonstration. Be prepared for the questions from your audience.
The time limit for this task is 45 minutes.

You are at public project introduction. Present your project as a team.
In turn you will be the audience for the second team during their presentation. Be ready to ask a lot
of questions as expected from the everyday public.
The time limit is 30 minutes for presentations and 15 minutes for debriefing.
Fig. 2 (continued)
2.4 Simulation as a Tool for Testing and Evaluating

Learner Performance
Simulations can also be used as testing tools for assessing all components of
communicative competence. It is more natural to test and evaluate communicative
competence in spontaneous performance where interaction flows naturally, prob-
lems have to be tackled in real time and the participants are forced to use all their
skills to cooperate with others. Such assessment requires two evaluators who
observe and assess a simulation task according to the set criteria. This kind of
evaluation differs from more traditional exams but the best solution is to apply this
technique together with more traditional ones to get a better picture of learners’
abilities. Assessment with the help of a simulation concentrates mainly on soci-
olinguistic, pragmatic and organizational components of communicative compe-
tence. The organizational component of communicative competence is related to
the mastery of the formal aspects of language performance in communication with
others with respect to grammar, cohesion and rhetoric (Bachman, 1990). Bachman
(1990) suggests using separate rating scales for assessing the sociolinguistic,
pragmatic and organizational components of communicative competence. He also
suggests using situations in which participants engage in a certain amount of
informal communication in a realistic setting. New approaches to evaluating dif-
ferent components of communicative competence are discussed in Bachman and
Palmer (2010).
Fulcher, Davidson and Kemp (2011) also recommend a new tool for evaluation,
called performance decision tree (PDT), which allows observation of language
performance and its evaluation by means of detailed descriptors. The advantage of
this approach lies in evaluating learner performance in a specific realistic context,
and assessment of this kind has greater potential to enable a more complex
description of such performance. In the case of pragmatic competence, it also
focuses on aspects of nonverbal communication, that is eye contact, facial
expression and posture, signs of warmth, empathy or humor in the speaker’s
reactions or the ability to listen to the opinions of interlocutors and explain details
precisely.
A simulation can be a time-consuming activity, regardless of whether it is used
for instructional or assessment purposes. Its successful employment in language
lessons requires meticulous preparation on the part of the teacher, precise expla-
nation of its aims and procedures, as well as careful debriefing on completion of the
task. In the case of testing, another restricting factor is the need for the presence of
more than one evaluator. All of this may lead to reluctance to use simulations, but
teachers who decide to take the risk will soon see the clear benefits and will become
keen users of this technique.
46 Z. Schormová
3 The Use of Simulation in Fostering Learner Autonomy
3.1 The Link Between Learner Autonomy and Simulations
Since Holec (1981, p. 3) first used the term learner autonomy and proposed its first
definition as “(…) the ability to take charge of one’s own learning”, views on the
most advantageous ways of fostering learner independence have changed consid-
erably. Holec distinguished between self-directed learning, which represents a
desirable learning situation, and learner autonomy, which represents the capacity
for this type of learning. This distinction has been accepted and further developed
by many researchers, such as Smith (2008), Benson (2001, 2007) or Little (1991).
Many specialists agree that developing learner autonomy is a process of making
people independent so that they can successfully learn a foreign language in an
active, self-directed way and take responsibility for this process. There are strong
voices that autonomy is best promoted by means of computers, but it can be argued
that if communicative competence of the learners with all its components needs to
be developed, it can only be done by real interaction between participants in a
simulated environment. Using computers can surely have a positive influence on
developing vocabulary and writing skills. However, it is unlikely to provide
opportunities for interpersonal and socio-cultural interaction. It is essential at this
point to determine whether a simulation has the power to enhance learner autonomy
and whether its implementation corresponds to the main principles of learner
autonomy.
The essential role of a teacher as a facilitator who promotes the particular skills
and enhances the psychological attributes involved in learner autonomy in the
classroom is stressed by Benson (2001), although different teaching approaches
have been proposed (Dam 1995). According to the ‘Bergen definition’, learner
autonomy is “a capacity and willingness to act independently and in cooperation
with others, as a social, responsible person” (Dam, Eriksson, Little, Millander, &
Trebbi, 1990, p. 102). Taking into consideration the fact that developing learner
autonomy is based on three fundamental pedagogical principles (Little, 1991), that
is learner involvement, learner reflection and appropriate target language use, it can
be said to fully reflect the rationale behind the use of simulations in language
teaching. Learners share responsibility for their learning process in a simulation
because they organize, conduct, and choose their approach to dealing with given
tasks and they are responsible for the outcome together with other participants.
During the debriefing phase, which constitutes an integral part of any simulation,
they evaluate and critically discuss the choices made and the strategies used. It
should also be emphasized that the target language should be used during all the
four phases of a simulation. A comparison of a wider spectrum of issues involved in
Table 1 Comparison of principles of learner autonomy and a simulation (Schormová, 2012)

Principles of learner autonomy Principles of a simulation
Autonomy supports a shift from teaching to The teacher takes on the role of a facilitator,
learning the classroom takes on real-life dimensions,
and participants learn actively by doing
things
Autonomy gives the teacher a supporting role The teacher does not participate or interfere
in the learning process but prepares the activity carefully with a view
to fulfilling learning goals, explains and
observes the simulation
Autonomy makes it possible for the learner to Participants are fully responsible for their
have a strong influence on his learning decisions which must be realistic and require
process the use of their skills, experience and
solutions
Autonomy fosters cooperation and peer A simulation is fully cooperative, whether it
support happens in pairs, groups or even the whole
class; everyone has his/her own role and
responsibilities
An integral part of autonomy is self/peer Self/peer assessment is done in the debriefing
assessment part; participants discuss which decisions
were the best for the task solution and which
were not, as well as evaluate the level of
involvement of each participant in the
simulation
Autonomy enables differentiation in Simulations used for language learning are
motivation, needs, interests and independence open-ended; every participant can use his or
of individual learners her own strategies and skills and makes his or
her own decisions concerning organization;
there is no pre-determined result
Students can bring the outside world into the Participants have functional and real roles
classroom representing their future professions in a
simulation; the real world is simulated but it
is safe, without concerns for making mistakes
the principles underlying learner autonomy and the use of simulations can be found
in Table 1.
Examining Table 1, it is possible to conclude that a simulation is a suitable and
effective strategy for enhancing learner autonomy in the language classroom. It is
especially useful for students representing A2 or higher proficiency levels according
to the Common European framework of references for languages (CERF) as well as
for students learning foreign languages for specific purposes. Most of them are
familiar with the principles of a simulation because it is used in specialized subjects
to develop their professional skills. Transferring this familiar technique into the
process of learning a foreign language seems to be a natural step, which is likely to
be beneficial for them.
48 Z. Schormová
3.2 Enhancing Learner Autonomy with the Help

of Simulations
The development of learner autonomy is best ensured with the help of active
methods or techniques which stimulate cognitive functions and encourage the use
of the target language for a specific purpose. Such activities foster the development
of communicative competence which is necessarily seen as a complex of skills and
competences needed in spoken and written language as well as the development of
all four target language skills (reading, listening, writing and speaking). The
development of communicative competence will also be facilitated by knowing and
using different learning strategies. Language learning strategies can be defined as
“specific actions taken by the learner to make learning easier, faster, more enjoy-
able, more self-directed, more effective, and more transferrable to new situations”
(Oxford, 1990, p. 8). Learning strategies can be divided, according to Oxford, into
direct and indirect. Direct ones are represented by memory, cognitive and com-
pensation strategies, while indirect ones include metacognitive, affective and social
ones (Oxford, 1990). At some point in language learning, every learner should be
able to identify which learning strategies work best for him or help and are most
likely to contribute to grater mastery of different skills. As for direct learning
strategies, memory strategies aid learners in creating mental links, applying images
and sounds, reviewing well and employing action. Cognitive strategies help him or
her effectively engage in practicing, receiving and sending messages, analyzing and
reasoning as well as creating structures for input and output. If the learner lacks
necessary vocabulary and cannot express himself or herself, compensation strate-
gies can be instrumental in guessing intelligently and overcoming limitations in
speaking and writing. With respect to indirect strategies, metacognitive ones assist
learners in centering their learning, arranging, planning and evaluating it. Affective
strategies, in turn, are useful for lowering anxiety or taking one’s emotional emo-
tional temperature. Finally, social strategies enable learners to function within the
society and engage in interaction by asking questions, cooperating and empathizing
with others (Oxford, 1990).
Many specialists appreciate simulation techniques and emphasize their two key
facets, that is reliance on rules and on strategies. While certain rules need to be
obeyed to ensure that a specific pattern of a simulation is followed, strategic
selection of moves taking place during the performance of a task allows a simu-
lation to evolve. A simulation represents the so-called real-world system, thereby
diminishing the consequences of errors (Crookall & Saunders, 1989). A simulation
technique is one of the most interesting and powerful techniques that can be used in
education and training, including foreign language instruction (Jones, 1995). It has
become widely recognized as constituting a dynamic and powerful tool in many
different fields, such as conflict resolution, decision-making, language instruction,
intergroup relations and cultural values. It is characterized by an interdisciplinary
potential and it can thus be used as a powerful instructional tool, an effective
instrument in professional training and a useful aid in research projects. In other
words, a simulation can find its application in education, training and research
(Crookall & Saunders, 1989). No other classroom technique provides the same
blend of reality and responsibility within a language context (Jones, 1982).
The language used in simulations is more authentic and richer than the language
used in traditional language classes. Interaction during simulations is not inter-
rupted by the teacher so that it becomes more fluent and natural. Active partici-
pation of students is necessary but also easier to ensure because a simulation
provides an attractive and relevant context in which they collaboratively take part in
making decisions, solving problems, or arriving at solutions, which allows them to
use various strategies and verify their effectiveness (Crookall, Oxford, Saunders, &,
Levine, 1989). Using a simulation in foreign language instruction enables learners
to use language creatively and communicatively and brings with it five significant
advantages (Hyland, 1993):
• encouraging motivation because it is purposeful and participants can bring along
their own experience and take their own decisions;
• developing fluency in the target language because the context requires that
language is subordinate to an activity and the participants are learning by doing;
• integrating various skills, including pragmatic ones (e.g., using nonverbal
components of language), developing intercultural and interpersonal compe-
tences, and ensuring practice in cognitive skills, such as analyzing, evaluating
and synthetizing,
• supporting active participation of learners who are absorbed by the interaction
itself;
• reducing anxiety and stress associated with learning and using a new language.
In simulations learners are also provided with opportunities for frequent reliance
on learning strategies, which is an additional argument for their use in foreign lan-
guage instruction. This comment applies in particular to the development of com-
municative competence in teaching English for specific purposes, for example
medical English. This is the area in which students benefit to a particularly high degree
from the use of simulations, which can cater to their specific goals and needs.
4 Conclusion
There is no doubt that learner autonomy can be supported in many different ways.
This paper has argued that one of the most useful techniques that can be used for
this purpose is adept reliance on simulations. For teachers who have not yet tried
simulations, the above discussion can provide a useful source of information about
the principles, structure, design and actual implementation of such activities. An
attempt has also been made to highlight the similarities in the principles under-
pinning the development of autonomy and the use of simulations, with both of them
likely to contribute to the development of communicative competence in the case of
50 Z. Schormová
students learning English for specific purposes. Two practical examples of simu-
lations for nursing and paramedic students have also been presented to give the
reader an idea of such issues as their structure, function, implementation and timing.
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Developing Learners’ Intercultural
Competence Through Autonomous
Learning
Paweł Sobkowiak
Abstract This paper examines experiential learning, as exemplified by ethno-

graphic projects assigned for the purpose of developing learners’ intercultural
competence. In the first, theoretical part, the ethnographic approach with its
capacity to develop both learners’ intercultural competence and their ability to
control their own learning is discussed. Ethnographic projects as an arena of
independent learning engage learners in exploring foreign culture/s and provide
them with ample opportunities to observe, analyze and interpret various contexts in
which the target language is used. They foster their cognitive skills, teach critical
and analytical thinking and the ability to mediate. Simultaneously, ethnographic
tasks have the potential to foster learner autonomy. Thus, the link between the two
has been analyzed. In the second part of the paper, the findings of the research
carried out in several high schools in Poland in 2011 are reported. The study
attempted to investigate whether and to what degree elements of autonomous
learning are implemented in FL classes focusing on teaching foreign culture. The
conclusion is that the learners have very few opportunities to become autonomous,
both in the foreign language classroom and outside of it. Teachers do very little to
foster their learners’ autonomy and do not assign ethnographic projects to them.
1 Introduction
Since English has internationalized and is used for global communication, greater
emphasis in the foreign language (FL) classroom should be given to the role of
language in the construction of our cultural identities and the understanding of
cultural differences. This is extremely difficult to achieve in homogeneous classes,
typical of the Polish educational context. Autonomous techniques such as ethno-
graphic projects seem to be conducive to the development of learners’ intercultural
competence (IC) since they provide considerable opportunities to explore various
P. Sobkowiak (&)
School of Law and Administration, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland
e-mail: pawelsob@amu.edu.pl

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-07764-2_4
52 P. Sobkowiak
aspects of culture and help acquire deeper understanding of foreign culture/s and
otherness, which is invaluable for successful cross-cultural communication.
Experiential learning shifts the focus from learning about a set of cultural
practices to learning with and through practices, from culture seen as a product (i.e.,
factual information to be learned by heart) to culture perceived as a process.
Furthermore, it gives students resources for analyzing their own cultural identity
and practices. The present paper aims at discussing the ethnographic approach to
FL learning used for the purpose of developing students’ IC and clarifying how it
helps them become autonomous and thus effective learners. In the empirical part, it
reports the findings of a research project carried out in 2011 in several high schools.
The study aimed to investigate whether and to what degree elements of autonomous
learning are implemented in the intercultural FL classroom in Poland.
2 Ethnographic Approach to Culture and Language

Learning
Ethnographic projects or field research engage learners in using FL to explore

different cultures and observe, analyze and interpret various contexts in which it is
used. Such tasks develop not only their communicative competence in the target
language but also IC. By exposing learners to the micro-worlds of foreigners with
their different worldviews, they promote tolerance, increase students’ awareness of
diversity, help search for human similarities and acquire desirable attitudes to
otherness, foster empathy, open-mindedness, respect for the others and try to
prevent/modify stereotypical views students may hold.
Learning ethnographically helps learners understand that reality is socially
constructed—the world is not a set of objective facts but is made by individuals—
social beings in everyday lives (Agar, 2000, p. 26). Students internalize a range of
concepts and categories to describe culture, which helps them comprehend its
power and influence on communication. They realize both cognitively and emo-
tionally that languages are the vehicles for the expression of culture. Consequently,
they can no longer dismiss the centrality of culture in their lives and the lives of
others. This knowledge is extremely important since only the people who are aware
of cultural differences and know their own culture can distance themselves from it,
thus having the capacity to reduce or regulate its influence in contacts with for-
eigners. Such cultural self-awareness also increases learners’ ability to identify any
bias in intercultural situations and mediate whenever cultural misconceptions occur.
Ethnographic learners become more attentive to cross-cultural encounters and more
empathic towards foreigners. They are reluctant to label others mechanically and
attribute positive qualities to foreigners without carrying out a detailed inspection
first (Weigl, 2009, pp. 347–348).
Ethnographic projects show learners that the perception of the world is subjective
and that “our thoughts and feelings are always culturally shaped and influenced by
Developing Learners’ Intercultural Competence … 53
one’s biography, social situation and historical context” (Rosaldo, 1989, p. 129). To
know a foreign culture, first we have to go beyond the natural, assumed stance of
seeing everything from one unified point of view. Furthermore, culture is always
experienced in an emotion-driven way, that is, in contacts with foreigners we are
irrational and defensive rather than fair and objective. We tend to favor our in-group
and to discriminate against the out-group. Thus, FL learners have to become aware of
the role subjectivity and emotions play in their perception of the world and the
resultant hurdles they may encounter in communication with foreigners.
Students have to learn that people with different roots can coexist and learn from
each other. According to Kim (2008, p. 360), to achieve cross-cultural under-
standing people, “should look across and beyond the frontiers of traditional group
boundaries with minimum prejudice or illusion, and learn to strive for a society and
a world that celebrates diversity side by side with a unifying cohesion”. FL learners
who aspire to use English successfully in intercultural communication should
undergo a fundamental psychological transformation toward the intercultural
identity. Firstly, they should go beyond the limits of their original cultural back-
ground and, secondly, transcend cultural differences to be able to acknowledge the
interconnectedness among all the people. This transformation can be achieved
through prolonged intercultural contacts and adaptation experiences over time
whether living, working or traveling abroad and in multiple encounters with foreign
cultures at home. In the case of Polish students learning English in homogeneous
classrooms, ethnographic projects could provide them with the intercultural input
they lack, both inside and outside the instructional setting.
Hymes (1980) claims that we are all born with ethnographic abilities, which are
usually lost in the process of formal education. Thus, while young children learn
instinctively from participation and observation, adults have to grasp the ethno-
graphic approach anew. Ethnographic learning helps learners acquire detailed
knowledge and conventions of the target culture and become aware of the com-
plexity and contradictions of the cultural discourse. It engages them in exploring on
their own the practices and beliefs of whole communities, and the meanings, norms
and scripts of their worlds, thus providing ample opportunities to analyze the
impact this search has on them in terms of conceptualization of themselves and
others, and on their knowledge of foreign social and cultural practices (Roberts,
2003, p. 114).
Small-scale research into behavior in various situational contexts that is carried
out by learners can help them realize, for example, that meaning is constructed
jointly by the participants in conversations and arises out of the interaction between
them in a specific context.1 By immersing themselves in the target community for a
1
Nightingale (1989) has doubts concerning whether such small-scale research projects can be
called ‘ethnographic’, since they usually focus on a small group and consequently lose the
complexity of description valued in broader ethnographic studies carried out by professional
ethnographers. Yet, from the perspective of developing learners’ IC, they are very useful because
they help learners realize that culture is multidimensional and give them a broader understanding
of it.
54 P. Sobkowiak
longer time, learners become the participant-observers of a foreign culture, and their
goal is to uncover the knowledge which governs social behavior in a particular
context, exemplified by a set of established linguistic codes. They try to discover
and explicate the rules for contextually appropriate behavior in a given group, for
example, what kind of body language accompanies basic exchanges such as
greetings, or when handshakes or kisses are acceptable or not. This is the knowl-
edge needed to function well as a member of the community. In the process of
doing ethnographic research, learners realize that communication breakdowns in a
FL may result not only from the speakers’ deficient language but also from their
wrong cultural assumptions (Kramsch, 1993; Risager, 2007).
A valuable asset of ethnographic activities is that they are exercises in decen-
tering from the conventional attitudes of the students’ home culture but are not
meant to deny or substitute for the patterns of thought characteristic of the home
culture or to imply that one way of thinking is better than another. This decentering
encourages learners to see themselves through the eyes of others, which is very
useful since the very act of becoming less of a stranger and more of a group
member creates an awareness of who we are in relation to others (Roberts, 2003,
p. 118). While meeting what is strange and yet not understood in others, learners are
encouraged to be reflexive and to acknowledge their role in understanding the
others. However, to capitalize on the potential that ethnographic projects have in
developing students’ IC, each activity should be followed by a period of reflection
on and an in-class discussion of the assumptions underlying the observed behaviors
(Corbett, 2003, pp. 106–107).
Students bring to their encounters with foreigners culturally conditioned social
knowledge and prior experiences used to interpret the utterances of the interlocu-
tors. Thus, ethnographic projects increase their awareness that meaning is dialogic,
that is, negotiated between the participants in context, and arises from an individ-
ual’s wish to express himself or herself (Corbett, 2003, pp. 96–97).2 Such projects
involve students both in oral and written interaction with the teacher, their class-
mates and the contents of what is to be learned. They also let them gain valuable
experience from encounters with a new culture and restructure their knowledge
accordingly. Another advantage of the ethnographic approach is that it reveals that
declarative knowledge of any foreign culture/s (i.e., factual information) is not
enough to communicate successfully with foreigners. Students realize that culture
often involves implicit knowledge that governs different types of behavior in
concrete situations, which makes it so difficult to learn (Sercu, 1998). Thanks to
ethnographic practice learners acquire observational skills which will be useful in
contacts with unfamiliar cultures. Learning from immediate experience engages
them intellectually and emotionally. Students are no longer passive recipients of
information. The experience stemming from ethnographic observations should help
them manage intercultural clashes and foster mediation skills.
2
A social practice is considered as a kind of text through which certain meanings are produced and
interpreted.
Although constructing ethnographic accounts of cultures requires professional

qualifications and is usually the job of trained researchers, advocates of the inter-
cultural approach to language learning argue that some training in ethnographic
techniques will suffice for language learners to benefit from exploring a foreign
culture by themselves (Byram & Fleming, 1998; Roberts, Byram, Barro, Jordan, &
Street, 2001). However, Roberts (2003) states that if an ethnographic study is to be
beneficial for developing students’ IC, it should be holistic: “Whatever size unit is
chosen, the ethnographer’s job is to understand it from every angle. Often, the best
course of action is to focus right down on something small and examine it in detail”
(p. 124).
A very good opportunity for learners to carry out small-scale ethnographic
projects seem to be student exchange programs. The period abroad during which
students are no longer rooted in their native culture and try to establish direct
contacts with the unfamiliar environment offers a unique intercultural experience.
Ethnographic projects give learners an impulse to analyze and reflect on being
in-between cultures, to think about social, emotional and intellectual aspects of this
experience. While doing an ethnographic project, learners develop intercultural
understanding of the world, learn respect for cultural differences and become more
open, mindful, flexible and inclusive individuals. It must be remembered, however,
that the development of IC is not an automatic outcome of such visits. New cultural
elements are not simply added to the learners’ prior, internal knowledge.
Developing intercultural sensitivity and competence is a process over which each
individual has some degree of control, based on his or her predispositions,
pre-existing needs and interests. For learners to become intercultural, deculturation
or unlearning of at least some of the old cultural elements has to occur; they have to
learn new responses in the situations that would instinctively evoke the ones rooted
in the native culture. The act of acquiring something new is always connected with
suspending and/or losing some of the old habits, at least temporarily, that is, the
interplay of acculturation and deculturation (Kim, 2009, p. 363).
According to Damen (1987, p. 141), the ultimate goal of language and culture
learning is acculturation, which she defines as “the continuous process in which the
immigrant adapts to and acquires the host culture, so as to be directed towards the
ultimate assimilation”. For her, the best way to achieve this is to get students
involved in a range of observational tasks, which finally leads to their acquiring
understanding of the assumptions and knowledge that guide different cultural
behaviors. However, the learner is not expected to assimilate the target behavior but
only to be able to mediate, that is, adapt his or her usual behavior in order to
manage a particular intercultural encounter (Damen, 1987, pp. 228–230).3
3
For example, an intercultural non-Moslem learner will understand that his or her Moslem friend
refuses an invitation to dinner because of his religion’s strict concerns about food preparation, and,
thus, his refusal should not be perceived as a sign of being unfriendly or giving offence. She or he
will recognize that the conventions of friendship and religious belief are in conflict here and should
try to find a solution by, for example, thinking of an alternative way of socializing (Corbett, 2003,
p. 106).
56 P. Sobkowiak
Learners do not perceive all experiences with foreign culture/s as positive,

especially if they have not been given any help and guidance. The largest hurdles
for the development of cultural understanding are stereotypes, or pictures in our
heads used to categorize the world. Individuals see what they expect to see, which
Bennett (1998, p. 12) refers to as self-fulfilling prophecies. Stereotypes are formed
early during the process of socialization, irrespective of our experiences, and help
us identify ourselves as belonging to a certain group. They are deeply ingrained in
our minds and are very difficult to reject. Thus, any critique of stereotypes can be
experienced as attacks on our socio-cultural identity and values. According to
Forsman (2010), our expectations and perception of the world are governed by both
positive and negative values closely connected with stereotypes, which do not
merely describe the world but create it.
It is extremely important to prepare students both intellectually and practically
before they go abroad so that their encounters with foreign culture/s and foreigners
could contribute to their deeper understanding of both the foreign culture/s and
otherness. Such preparation should not be merely limited to presenting them with
information about different aspects of the foreign culture or the necessary linguistic
knowledge. Its main objective is not only to compare the native and foreign cultures
but also foster students’ openness and reflexivity, that is, encourage them to be
more explicit about their own assumptions and attitudes about themselves and the
foreigners. Teachers should warn learners against generalizations and stereotyping
of foreign societies and groups. Without this, the experience of being abroad may
widen the gaps between the self and the foreigners and contribute to strengthening
learners’ prejudices and negative stereotypes concerning the others instead of
rejecting and bridging them. Student foreign exchanges should also be summarized
after the learners return home. The participants should report to their classmates the
findings of their ethnographic projects and should be asked to reflect on the
behaviors of both the foreigners and their own. They should have an opportunity to
relate their experience of staying abroad to the theoretical knowledge of the foreign
culture. At the heart of such discussions lies encouraging learners to think inde-
pendently, talk about their feelings and thoughts, and find solutions to communi-
cation breakdowns resulting from cultural misconceptions.
The ethnographic approach not only helps learners develop their IC, but it is also
conducive to fostering their autonomy in learning since it is learner-centered and
self-directed. Autonomy is an attribute of good learners who achieve the expected
results in FL learning. That is why Benson (2001, p. 2) considers it “a legitimate
and desirable goal of language education”. Doing an ethnographic project involves
practicing autonomy on different levels, as illustrated in Fig. 1. Firstly, learners take
the initiative, that is, they diagnose their learning needs, formulate learning goals,
identify resources, make a decision concerning what they want to examine, plan and
determine the content of the research project and choose the methods of inquiry and
appropriate strategies (thus, they exercise control over learning management).
Secondly, while they perform the task they reflect on its goals, which leads to an
increase in their sensitivity to the learning process. Thirdly, they exercise control
over the input and output of the project (they have control over learning content).
Fig. 1 Stages of
ethnographic projects Reporting Posing
facilitative of fostering questions
findings
students’ autonomy
Choosing
Reflecting, discussing, criticizing,
direction
analyzing, conceptualizing, and
synthesizing
methods
Conducting
experiment
Simultaneously, all the time students get involved in an ongoing assessment of the
task and self-monitoring. Finally, they report the findings of their research, which
might be an impulse to undertake another project in the future. At the successive
stages learners assume responsibility for the task, and, broadly speaking, for
learning itself. They also exercise control over the cognitive processes involved in
carrying out the task, such as reflecting, discussing, criticizing, analyzing, con-
ceptualizing and synthesizing. The stages mentioned above coincide with the notion
of learning perceived as a cyclical process that integrates experience, reflection,
abstract conceptualization and action (Benson, 2001, p. 38).
Ethnographic projects and the concept of autonomy in language learning share a
focus on the learner who is the key agent in the learning process. While performing
the task, the learner is increasingly becoming a person who is able to construct
knowledge about the foreign culture directly from experience. At the same time, he
or she is increasing his or her ‘learning capital’. Ethnographic tasks make learners
more independent and, thus, more efficient language learners. The ethnographic
approach also encourages learners to actively participate in the process of learning
and to construct knowledge through social interaction. While doing the task, they
develop a range of cognitive skills, such as making analogies, classifying,
abstracting away, constructing and rejecting hypotheses, reorganizing knowledge
and self-observation of the processes involved in understanding the foreign
language/culture. Additionally, ethnographic projects provide students with ample
opportunities to use learning strategies consciously, to solve problems and to
practice critical and analytical thinking. Thus, they help students not only to
develop IC but also become skilled language learners, capable of autonomic
learning, which is valuable in the times of life-long education.
Getting involved in ethnographic projects learners are fully involved in the
decisions about the content and the process of learning and systematically take
control over their own learning. However, fostering autonomy does not mean
leaving learners to their own devices but encouraging and assisting them so that
58 P. Sobkowiak
their learning can be more effective, which means that the goals they have deter-
mined for themselves can be achieved (Benson, 2001, p. 75). Thus, the teacher
plays a very important role of a facilitator, helper, coordinator, counselor, consul-
tant and adviser to whom learners can resort whenever it is necessary.
3 Research Study
3.1 Aims, Methodology and Procedures
To see if learners’ IC is developed in a Polish FL classroom through autonomous

learning, empirical research was undertaken.4 Its main objective was to check
whether and to what extent, while teaching foreign culture/s, teachers attempt to
foster autonomy through practices that allow their learners to get engaged in the
modes of independent learning. It also aimed at answering the following questions:
Does FL classroom practice encourage and enable learners to take control of their
learning; do students set their own learning objectives and have a choice concerning
the selection of learning materials; do they plan activities and self-manage the
process of learning; do they evaluate the outcome of learning and get involved in
critical reflection of their learning; and, finally, is the potential of fieldwork capi-
talized on.
To achieve objectivity of the findings, triangulation of the data collection was
used. The research was both quantitative and qualitative. To elicit data for the
quantitative part of the study, a noninterventionist approach was adopted and a
delayed retrospective method of data collection was used. In Spring 2011 a
paper-and-pencil questionnaire in Polish, developed by the author of this paper, was
first distributed among a sample of learners in a few high schools in Poznań,
Poland. Three schools were selected by drawing, with four classes in each school
being involved. The same questionnaire was given to the randomly selected
teachers at a range of conferences, seminars and meetings in various cities in Poland
(Warsaw, Poznań, Wrocław, Leszno, Koszalin, Lublin) from September to
December 2011. In the case of both questionnaires stratified, multiple stage sam-
pling was used. Finally, groups (strata) were established, with their members
assigned by gender. Thus, the sample was truly representative and the results can be
generalized beyond the study group.
Both questionnaires were administered to a sample of 353 learners and 489
teachers, who agreed to participate in the study. The data from the final sample of
338 learners and 317 teachers who completed and returned questionnaires were
analyzed using a standard set of psychometric procedures. The sample size fulfilled
the sample requirement recommended by Nunnally (1994) of 300 respondents for
4
This study is part of a larger research project which aims at assessing intercultural teaching and
learning in the Polish context (Sobkowiak‚ 2012, 2015).
scale testing. Microsoft Excel was used to compute descriptive statistics and esti-
mation theory was applied to analyze the results. Of the 338 learner respondents,
48 % were men (162) and 52 % were women (176). Of the 317 teacher respon-
dents, 83.91 % were women (266) and 16.09 % (51) men.
The students’ questionnaire included 21 items (7 open-ended, 14 closed-ended)
and the teachers’ questionnaire consisted of 33 items (27 closed-ended [multiple
choice] and 6 open-ended). Some of the items had the form of checklists, which is
exemplified by items concerning methods of teaching culture in classes preparing
students for their visits abroad. Only the answers to the items pertaining to fostering
students’ autonomy are presented and discussed further in the paper. Pilot ques-
tionnaires were administered to a sample of 12 learners and 10 teachers to check the
clarity of instructions and items, and the overall time needed for completion.
The data collected in the qualitative part of the study came from the observations
of 21 English lessons taught in six high schools. The research was carried out from
September to November 2011, and the lessons were recorded with the help of a
Dictaphone. The observations were conducted in freshmen, junior and senior clas-
ses, three of which had an intensive program of English, that is, six hours of
instruction, and three of which had a regular program, that is, three hours per week.
Their level of language proficiency ranged from pre-intermediate to
upper-intermediate. The lessons were conducted by seven different teachers (six
females and one male), university graduates with qualifications for teaching English.
Their experience ranged from one to 30 years. Three had a position of appointed
teachers, three were certified teachers (the highest status in the Polish educational
system), and only one was a contractual teacher, with one year of experience.
Each teacher was observed over a sequence of three lessons with the same class;
the objective of each class was to develop the students’ IC. Finally, the teachers
were interviewed, which increased the validity of the findings (Silverman, 2011,
p. 253). The sample was not representative since the subjects were not drawn from a
population and were chosen at random, so the results from this part of the research
cannot be generalized. However, the sample was diversified and reflects well the
reality of the Polish high school. The number, frequency and types of autonomous
learning/teaching elements observed in the classroom were analyzed. A specially
designed form was used during lesson observations, which allowed registering the
types of learning materials used in the classroom, and all autonomous practices and
their frequency. This made quantification of the results possible. To ensure relia-
bility of the observations, notes were simultaneously taken during these lessons by
the author of this paper (Silverman, 2011, p. 247).
3.2 Results and Discussion I (Questionnaire Study)
The overwhelming majority of the teacher subjects (78.86 %; 250) claimed that a
wide range of educational materials, such as books, articles and films, as well as
discussing cultural differences in the classroom (78.55 %;), can help them develop
60 P. Sobkowiak
students’ IC. 72.56 % respondents (230) asked their students to prepare and deliver
presentations about history, geography, literature and other aspects of foreign cul-
tures. The informants also ranked highly discussing current events in the country/ies
whose language the students are learning (67.19 %; 213) and teachers’ mini-lectures
on the chosen aspects of the foreign cultures (50.47 %; 160). Lower in the ranking
were comprehensive ethnographic projects or individual mini-research into the
foreign culture/s carried out on a small scale by the students (41.32 %; 131),
role-plays or simulations engaging them in acting out cross-cultural dialogues in the
classroom (30.28 %; 96) and creating cultural portfolios (23.66 %; 75).
In the open-ended part of the questionnaire, very few subjects added any other
sources of developing students’ IC in the classroom than the activities listed by the
present author. Among them were inviting native speakers to the classroom
(1.26 %; 4), offering separate IC training, assigning translation exercises or
cross-national projects to be performed with the students from the partner school
abroad by means of e-twinning (each 0.63 %; 2), preparing and performing a play
in a FL and organizing special events, for example, a foreign language day (each
0.31 %; 1). Thus, the teachers resorted mainly to traditional methods of teaching,
and not much was done to foster learner autonomy.
When asked if a FL classroom was a source of IC experience for them, 58 %
(195) of the learner informants answered yes, while 42 % (143) no. Those who
considered a FL classroom as a place where IC teaching takes place were asked to
tick the sources of their IC experience. Among the instruments used for this purpose
ticked by the subjects were course books (71 %; 101; 30 %),5 teachers’ lectures
(58 %; 83; 25 %), foreign language books, press articles and films (56 %; 80;
24 %), discussing cultural differences (43 %; 61; 18 %), students’ presentations on
the target language history, geography and various other aspects of the foreign
culture (32 %; 46; 14 %). 19 % of the participants mentioned projects (28; 8 %),
15 % discussing the current events (22; 7 %), and 4 % role-playing foreigners (6).
Only two respondents were asked to write cultural portfolios (1 %) and three (2 %)
mentioned the Internet as a source of IC experience in their FL classroom. Hence,
similarly to the results obtained from the teachers’ survey, the learner informants
claimed that autonomous learning plays a marginal role. Furthermore, there was a
huge discrepancy between the opinions concerning preparing and delivering pre-
sentations in FL classes centered on teaching/learning a foreign culture (78.55 %
teachers reported them in contrast to only 19 % of the learner respondents).
However, the data collected from the learners revealed that they try to be auton-
omous and have contact with the foreign language/s they are learning outside the
classroom, and presumably with the foreign cultures. 77 % (259) watch foreign TV
channels, 63 % (212) go abroad with their families, 41 % (140) read literature in
the foreign language/s, 48 % (161) take private lessons, 34 % (116) have friends
who are foreigners and keep in touch with them on a regular basis either by e-mail
or Skype, 33 % (111) read the press in the foreign language/s, 31 % (104) listen to
5
The second percentage is of the whole population surveyed (n = 338).
foreign broadcasts on the radio, 31 % (104) visit foreign sites on the Internet, and
15 % (52) participate in language camps during the summer.
As Byram (1997, pp. 64–65) claims, IC can be acquired in the classroom, by
pedagogically structured experience outside the classroom (i.e., fieldwork) and by
independent experience. The experience of fieldwork, particularly over a longer
term when learners are separated from their classmates and teachers, and from their
family and friends, has a twofold advantage. Firstly, it generates an interest in
foreign cultures which is not that of a tourist or a business person, and, secondly, it
provides opportunities to develop the abilities to cope with different stages of
adaptation to unfamiliar conventions of foreign behavior and patterns of interaction
(Byram, 1997, p. 69). For this reason, the respondents were asked about the foreign
exchange programs in their schools.
79.50 % (252) teacher respondents declared that their schools have such
exchange programs, whereas 20.50 % (65) claimed that visits abroad are not
organized. Although most schools had student exchanges, participation in them was
not common. Only 6 teachers (2.39 % of the subpopulation formed by the teachers
employed in schools with the exchange programs) declared that in their schools all
the students took part in visits abroad. 16 others (6.35 %) stated that the number of
students who went abroad ranged from 50 % to 75 % of the whole school popu-
lation. 52 subjects (20.63 %) claimed that 25–49 % of the school population par-
ticipated in school visits abroad. As many as 178 informants (70.63 %) declared
that the students who went abroad were the minority and accounted for 24 % or less
of the whole school population. Relatively low participation in foreign student
exchange programs was confirmed by the results obtained from the learner infor-
mants. 79 % of them (266) declared that the schools they attended earlier had
student foreign exchange programs, whereas 21 % (72) claimed that the visits
abroad were not organized by their schools. However, those exchange programs
were not available for all the students. Only 34 % (91) of the student subpopulation
that attend schools with foreign exchange programs participated in such exchanges
(27 %; 91 out of the whole population surveyed), whereas 66 % (175) did not
(73 %; 247 out of the whole population surveyed).
Unfortunately, even those students who took part in school visits abroad did not
benefit from them from the IC perspective as much as they could have since only
60.32 % (152) of the surveyed teachers prepared their learners for contacts with the
foreign culture, while 39.68 % (100) did not. Those who did this resorted to very
traditional methods, mainly to discussions in the classroom about the target culture
and cultural differences (51.97 %; 79), and lectures or speeches about the target
country (28.95 %; 44). Only 14.47 % of the teachers (22) assigned their students
presentations and 9.87 % (15) used project work; for example, they gave students
observational tasks to be performed while being abroad, allowing them to play the
role of an ethnographer. The examples of other tasks used at the preparatory stage
preceding the visits abroad included watching and discussing films with their
cultural contents (6.58 %; 10), searching the Internet (4.61 %; 7), language
preparation (3.29 %; 5), acting out hypothetical situations abroad (2.63 %; 4),
analyzing the previous visits from the school annals, discussing tolerance (1.32 %;
62 P. Sobkowiak
2 each) and encouraging students to play the role of ambassadors of Polish culture
during the stay abroad (0.66 %; 1). The results obtained from the learners show that
the majority of their teachers (67 %; 61) did not prepare them for contact with a
foreign culture.6 The minority who did this (33 %; 30) used very traditional
methods, mainly lectures and discussions about the target culture and cultural
differences (97 %; 88). Only 3 % (1) assigned their students presentations and 7 %
(2) observational tasks to be performed while being abroad.
Similarly, only 65.87 % teacher respondents (166) stated they summarized the
school visits abroad when back at school, whereas 34.13 % (86) did not do it at all.
Those who did organized in-class discussions (65.66 %; 109), asked the partici-
pants to deliver presentations to their classmates (27.71 %; 46), prepare a bulletin
board (9.64 %; 16) or write reports (7.83 %; 13). Some teachers encouraged the
learners to show slides or pictures taken during the trip (7.23 %; 12), and others
distributed questionnaires (6.63 %; 11), assigned special projects (4.82 %; 8) or
organized competitions which tested students’ knowledge of the foreign culture
(1.81 %; 3). There was again a huge discrepancy between the teachers’ declarations
mentioned earlier and the results obtained from the learners, who claimed that their
teachers did not summarize the school visits abroad when back at school (70 %;
64). The minority who did this (30 %; 27) organized in-class discussions (60 %;
16), slide shows (30 %; 8), assigned special projects (11 %; 3) or writing reports
(11 %; 3) and asked the students to prepare a bulletin board (4 %; 1).
Since IC is multidimensional and its development is a lengthy process which takes
years, it would be good if teachers of all school subjects made collaborative efforts to
get their students involved in tasks focusing on intercultural learning. Unfortunately,
the responses received from the teacher informants in the current study showed that in
Polish schools such cross-subject cooperation of teachers is very rare; only 17.35 %
(55) of the surveyed teachers declared to have undertaken such joint ventures versus
82.65 % (262) who did not do this. Those who worked together with teachers of other
subjects reported a wide range of activities designed together with teachers of Polish,
history, geography, another foreign language, biology, chemistry, information
technology, music and physical education. 32.73 % (18) organized one-day special
events such as tracing the writer Gunter Grass while sightseeing in Gdańsk, an
exhibition of pictures in memoriam of Anne Frank, a German Jewish woman, an
outing to a Christmas market in Germany, a trip to London, an incubator of
entrepreneurship (a business fair), a foreign language day, a foreign culture day, a
European day, a tourism day and various school competitions (e.g., a language
competition or a history-of-England-from-the-female-perspective competition).
27.27 % (15) assigned their students projects with such titles as Ethnic minorities in
Poznań (in cooperation with geography and history teachers), Polish-German
relationships (together with a history teacher), Music and dance: past and presence
6
Teachers’ responses given in questionnaires often reflect what they learned about a specific issue
in their methodology classes at the university and not what they really do in the classroom. For this
reason, the findings of such research are often considered unreliable and have to be complemented
by data from other sources.
(music, physical education, history teachers), Animals in literature (Polish and

biology teachers), and Safety on the Internet (with an information technology tea-
cher). 23.64 % (13) of the respondents organized fieldwork for their students. Other
examples of FL teachers’ cooperation with the teachers of other subjects reported in
the study included staging a play in a FL (7.27 %; 4), lessons about festivities and a
range of holidays in foreign countries (9.09 %; 5; with a teacher of Polish), tourist
attractions in our region—the best poster competition (10.91 %; 6; with a geography
teacher), and a lecture on ecology (3.64 %; 2). One respondent cooperated with a
teacher in a partner school; however, she did not specify the nature of this project.
3.3 Results and Discussion II (Observational Study)
57.14 % (12) of the observed lessons were based completely on the textbook a
given class used. 33.34 % (7) worked with the materials, mostly texts, chosen by
the teacher from other course books available on the market. In one lesson (4.76 %)
aimed at discussing the problem of stereotypes, namely whether using stereotypes is
bad or not, no educational materials were used at all; the whole classroom time was
devoted to a discussion. However, the topic was imposed on the learners and the
teacher had not prepared them to analyze this extremely difficult issue thoroughly.
What is more, the discussion was spontaneous and the learners did not participate in
its planning. This might be the reason why the students’ arguments presented in the
classroom were very naïve and vague, often off the topic. In fact, the role of
stereotypes in cross-cultural miscommunication was completely ignored. The
learners did not have any opportunities to exercise self-management, and, since
there was no moderator, the discussion was quite chaotic. The students tended to
digress and talk about a wide range of things not connected with the subject; for
example, by resorting to Schopenhauer’ philosophy one student wondered if the
nature of mankind is good or not. There was no summary of the debate at the end.
Although there were only 12 students in the classroom, seated in a circle, and the
teacher withdrew completely (she was a silent observer, standing outside of the
circle and helping the students a few times by giving them words they did not
know), half of the participants (6) did not take advantage of expressing themselves
spontaneously in English and did not say a word. The lesson did not contribute
much to developing the learners’ IC, nor was the potential to foster their autonomy
exploited. The result would have been much better if the teacher had asked her
learners to think of arguments in advance, at home, using any sources available.
Only then would such a simultaneous assignment have been a good exercise in
practicing autonomous learning.
Only one of the observed lessons (more precisely the phase of its preparation;
4.76 %), the subject of which was youth subcultures, helped the learners exercise
their autonomy. Most of the classroom time was spent on the students’ delivering
their presentations prepared at home in groups of three or four. Although the subject
was imposed on the learners, they had a choice concerning which of the subcultures
64 P. Sobkowiak
they would analyze. Since the assignment was group work, the students had an
opportunity to make a lot of decisions, such as appointing a group leader or allo-
cating subtasks to group members, to practice self-managing, and to synchronize
their work. This entailed a lot of negotiation and let the students exercise control
over their learning outside the classroom. The learners had had to do a lot of
research on their own, which also involved decision-making on a microscale. They
had a lot of independence at the stage of preparing their presentations, which
presumably contributed to an increase in their self-confidence. While delivering
presentations, the students had an opportunity to practice turn-taking and
time-management. In the follow-up phase, they had to decide who would answer
the questions from the audience. Unfortunately, the learners were not asked to
self-evaluate while doing the project, so we cannot draw any conclusions con-
cerning the effectiveness of this mode of autonomous learning in helping them
overcome obstacles to progress in learning or to develop their IC.
None of the observed teachers promoted self-access learning; in no school visited
was there a self-access center which would engage learners in studying the language
outside the classroom, allow them to exercise personal control, self-direction and
facilitate their informed choices, thus promoting autonomy. No one resorted to new
learning technologies, such as computer-assisted language learning or the Internet,
either. Probably, this was the result of a lack of proper infrastructure at the schools. In
no classroom did the learners have access to computers or the Internet. Furthermore,
the teachers very rarely took advantage of the students’ having access to the Internet at
home; only 2 of them (9.52 %) gave them tasks which required using Internet
resources independently at home. None of the homework assigned by the subject
teachers gave the learners an opportunity to choose alternative tasks. The most typical
pattern for homework assignments was either to do the tasks and exercises chosen by
the teacher (38.09 %; 8) or the ones in the textbook (23.80 %; 5). Quite surprisingly,
in as many as 7 lessons (33.34 %) no homework was assigned at all.
In the interviews which followed the observations, the teachers agreed that they
did not take into consideration promoting the learners’ autonomy when designing
their classes or teaching the cultural modules. The students did not participate in
either determining the goals of their learning or planning their classes since the
teachers were convinced that they had to work toward the objectives established by
the Ministry of Education. Quite surprisingly, developing learner autonomy is in
fact one the goals stated in the ministerial documents. Furthermore, the teachers say
that the learners, their parents and the school authorities expect them to prepare the
students for their final exam in English, which does not assess learners’ capabilities
of being autonomous. When asked why they did not allow their learners to choose
the content of their learning, task types or methodology, they claimed there is no
time for doing this and the students are not competent to make such decisions. The
respondent teachers were convinced that they know what is best for their learners to
pass the final exam, so there was no need to ask them what to do in the classroom or
how to do it. The time constraint was also responsible for avoiding learners’
self-assessment of their achievements in the classroom or encouraging them to

reflect on achieving learning objectives.
4 Conclusions
The data collected and analyzed in the study revealed that students’ IC in the Polish
context is developed in a very traditional way, mainly by transferring declarative
knowledge of the foreign culture/s. Autonomous practices, such as ethnographic
projects are used very rarely. Learners are not engaged in setting their own learning
objectives and do not select learning materials, nor do they plan in-class activities,
self-manage their learning or evaluate outcomes. The potential hidden in student
foreign exchanges is not used, either; not all students participate in them, and those
who do are not prepared to benefit from them to develop their IC.
Since the sample of the teachers observed in the classrooms was very limited,
more lessons should be observed to get a broader picture of whether FLs are taught
from an intercultural perspective and to what extent intercultural teaching is
accompanied by students’ managing their own learning and exercising control over
the learning content and cognitive processes involved in doing various tasks.
Further research into this would also validate the findings of the current study. As
for the directions of future investigations, research should be done to test the
relationship between students’ IC and using autonomic procedures such as ethno-
graphic projects. The findings of such studies, if a positive correlation is found,
would provide strong grounds for believing that giving learners control over various
aspects of the learning process is essential for the effective development of their IC.
Only then could the ethnographic approach become more popular in Polish schools.
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Educating Towards Learner Autonomy
in Early Education
Magdalena Wawrzyniak-Śliwska
Abstract Although learner autonomy is a widely recognized concept, whose value

has been acknowledged by the Polish Ministry of National Education, it is not
commonly implemented in Polish schools. Some signs of learner autonomy can be
seen in secondary schools or at tertiary level, but the connection between autonomy
and children has yet to be established. The aim of the article is to tackle the issue of
autonomy among young learners and to attempt to prove that learner autonomy and
young learners are not mutually exclusive. In the theoretical part, some relevant
research and publications on child development and learner autonomy will be
presented. Subsequently, the features of young-learner autonomy will be outlined.
The empirical part will give an account of a Teaching young learners project that
was carried out at Gdańsk University Teacher Training College. The implemen-
tation of the principles of autonomy in the course of the project and some obser-
vations made during it will be presented.
1 Introduction
Since the 1980s learner autonomy has been one of the buzz words in the field of
foreign language teaching (Little, 1991, p. 2). It has been researched and described,
a number of definitions have been proposed, its undeniable significance in language
learning has been established, and there have been attempts to implement it in some
educational contexts, with various results (Barfield & Delgado Alvarado, 2013;
Benson, 2001, 2007; Benson & Voller, 1997; Dam, 1995, 2001; Hobbs & Dofs,
2013; Little 1991, 1999, 2007, 2012; Little, Ridley, & Ushioda, 2002; Morrison &
Navarro, 2014; Pawlak, 2011; Raya, Lamb, & Vieira, 2007; Sinclair, McGrath, &
Lamb, 2000). The importance of independent and autonomous learning has been
recognized by the Polish Ministry of National Education. In the ministerial docu-
ments, the following aims of pre-school education are mentioned: supporting
M. Wawrzyniak-Śliwska (&)
University of Gdańsk, Gdańsk, Poland
e-mail: magdalenaws@ug.edu.pl

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-07764-2_5
68 M. Wawrzyniak-Śliwska
independent actions of a child; creating conditions allowing children to make

choices and realize the positive effects of their actions; helping the child to identify
problems, plan and tackle tasks; creating conditions allowing the child to recognize
and use different ways of approaching learning tasks; and supporting creativity in
different fields of activity.1 Also the skills and abilities that a child should develop
in primary education refer in many respects to learner autonomy: planning, orga-
nizing and assessing their own learning, taking more and more control over it;
solving problems in a creative way; searching, ordering and using information from
different sources; using knowledge in practice, providing valuable experience and
establishing useful habits.2
Despite the educational legislation and the undeniable popularity of the concept
of autonomy, there is little or no sign of its implementation in lower primary
schools. This is hardly surprising as, if we consider the most common meaning of
the term—some kind of independence in decision-making and action—most people
would naturally associate autonomy with adult learners, possibly also those in their
teens, but definitely not with children. The aim of this paper is to present some
arguments in favor of young-learner autonomy and some reflections regarding the
incorporation of the principles of autonomy into teaching English to young learners.
2 Young Learners and Autonomy
In Polish publications on learner autonomy the authors’ stance on the relationship

between learner autonomy and learner age is clear—almost all of them consider an
autonomous learner to be an adult learner.3 What is more, there are not too many
articles devoted to learner autonomy in the context of early education
(Rokita-Jaśkow, 2011). In a special issue of the journal Języki Obce w Szkole
[Foreign Languages in School], devoted to autonomy, there are only several texts
connecting the notion of autonomy with young learners.4
Komorowska (2004, p. 115) has stated that it would be “more than difficult to
introduce full autonomy” in the young learner classroom. In her view, children need
“close guidance from the teacher”, mainly because of safety reasons, and they
should be constantly under supervision, which makes it almost impossible to
1
Regulation of the Polish Minister of National Education 2000; Regulation of the Polish Minister
of National Education and Sports 2002.
2
Regulation of the Polish Minister of National Education 1999; Regulation of the Polish Minister
of National Education 2001.
3
M. Wysocka (2012) during her plenary lecture at the Autonomy Conference in Konin defined an
adult learner as somebody who is over 13, which would mean students of middle school in Poland.
Young learners are considered to be children up to the age of 10, that is, learners in pre-school and
lower primary school.
4
In fact, there are only five texts (out of 42) devoted to young learners by Andrzejewska,
Sikora-Banasik, Nicholls, Pamuła and Krause.
Educating Towards Learner Autonomy in Early Education 69
introduce autonomy while teaching this age group. However, Komorowska agrees
that limited autonomy could be implemented to some extent as far as methods,
techniques and work organization are concerned. Also Stępniewska-Dworzak
(2004, p. 243) argues that it is difficult to make young learners work independently,
both in and outside the classroom as children need to be supported by an adult they
trust—the teacher. Kamińska (2004) gives examples of some mnemonic techniques
that can be used to develop young-learner autonomy, such as TPR, spatial
grouping, acrostics, poems, rhymes and songs.
If there is so little attention given to autonomy in the context of teaching English to
young learners, if so many researchers reject the idea of children being autonomous, can
autonomy be associated with this age group? Can children be autonomous learners?
Undeniably, there is evidence, at least in some publications, of another trend showing
some awareness of the importance of implementing autonomous learning at an earlier
age. Little et al. (2002, p. 1) believe that “autonomy is an essential characteristic of all
truly successful learners, regardless of their age”. In a different publication Little (1991,
p. 46) states that learners should be “encouraged to start accepting responsibility for
their own learning (…) as soon as possible”, as the techniques that are commonly used
in order to promote autonomy at higher levels of education can be and are successfully
used in primary schools because they “imitate the modes of learning that have shaped
the child’s development to date: problem-solving in a context of social interaction”.
Habrat (2008) observes the importance of introducing learners to autonomous work as
early as possible as fostering autonomy is a long-term process that involves changing
attitudes and that cannot happen overnight. Cichoń (2002) argues that trying to intro-
duce new attitudes to learners at an older age might fail as they might have developed
learning habits that do not support autonomy, such as a preference for teacher-based
instruction, or reliance on the teacher’s control, supervision and evaluation. Also
Biedroń (2004), reflecting on the psychological version of autonomy (Benson, 1997),
advocates the importance of introducing learner autonomy among younger learners, as
“it is difficult to change the processes and thinking stereotypes in people whose per-
sonality has already been formed” (Biedroń, 2004, p. 86). Little (1991, p. 46) suggests
that secondary level learners encountering autonomous learning for the first time can be
resistant to it, as they have gone through “the experience of institutionalized learning”
and therefore become more teacher-dependent. He also concludes that “the older
learners are when they first meet the idea of autonomy, the harder the teacher will have
to work to persuade them that it makes sense” (1991, p. 48). The same line of reasoning
is presented by Klus-Stańska and Nowicka (2005), who maintain that “the first years a
child spends at school inevitably determine who the child will become, and consolidate
thinking and reasoning habits” (p. 7). A learner at higher levels of education “is not A
learner, but THE learner who has been formed by previous school experiences” (p. 8).
The above-mentioned publications show that it is essential to help children
develop certain learning habits as early as possible, and create situations in which
they can become accustomed to autonomous learning. At an early age, children try
to find their own ways of tackling tasks, and develop their own strategies for
planning, carrying out their plans and solving problems. Therefore, the sooner they
are introduced to an autonomous environment, the greater the chances that they will
become autonomous learners.
3 Personality Development Theories and Autonomy
Implementing the principles of autonomous teaching in courses for young learners

seems controversial to many teachers as they do not believe that young children are
capable of developing autonomous thinking and behavior. However, there is some
evidence proving the opposite. Little (2012) believes that even babies can be
regarded as autonomous. He quotes Salmon, who states that “[babies] are hardly
passive creatures to be easily molded by the actions of others. From their earliest
years, boys and girls make their active presence, their willful agency, their demands
and protests, very vividly felt. In every household that has children, negotiations
must be made with young family members: their personal agendas have somehow
to be accommodated”.
Autonomy is a concept that often appears in psychological theories of person-
ality formation. Erikson (2000) portrays the child’s development in the form of
identity crises. If the child can cope with the crisis, he is ready to go up to the next
stage, and, finally, reach maturity. According to Erikson, the first signs of autonomy
appear at the age of two, at the stage whose crisis is called autonomy versus shame
and doubt. At that age, the child learns to be self-reliant in basic routines but also
tries to be more psychologically independent of the parents. As a result, the child
learns to control its behavior, its determination develops and the child tests pos-
sibilities in exercising his autonomy (Engler, 1985. pp. 195–196).
Similarly, in Allport’s theory (1961), the first signs of the child’s autonomy
become visible between the age of two and three, when the child’s self-esteem
develops and when the child struggles to be independent and act alone. This
autonomy can be observed in negation of adults’ commands and in the child’s
independent exploration of its surroundings as the child becomes more and more
cognitively curious and needs to interact with the surrounding world (Pytka, 2000,
p. 32). Later the child’s autonomy expands when the function of self as a rational
coper develops, between six and twelve years of age. The child becomes more
proficient in rational thinking and decision-making and copes better with inde-
pendent problem-solving. At the age of thirteen, the child enters the phase of
intentional self, becomes mature and autonomous, fully aware of its abilities and
able to plan his or her own aims independently of others (Engler, 1985, pp. 239–
240; Fontana, 1988, pp. 244–255). According to Allport, autonomy is one of the
features of mature personality. It allows a person to develop self-esteem and
self-assessment, to plan for and reach success, and develop strategies for coping
with failure (Engler, 1985, pp. 240–242). It is achieved by completing all the seven
stages of personality development.
Allport’s and Erikson’s theories refer to child autonomy in the context of the
child’s development and show the relation between the successful completion of
identity/psychosocial phases and the growth of personal autonomy. Their research

shows that if a person does not experience and develop autonomy up to a certain
age, at an older age he or she might not be able to develop the features of an
autonomous human being at all. What is more, Brzezińska (2000, p. 231) observes
that if children fail in their attempts to become more autonomous, they develop
lower self-esteem and feel ashamed of themselves. Pytka (2000, p. 32) puts it even
more forcefully, noting that “the development of healthy personality of a child
depends on how the child goes through different stages of personality development.
(…) If the child’s needs are not fulfilled, later in life he becomes an unsteady,
aggressive, malicious, egoistic and envious person, and his normal development is
dubious”.
Creating optimal conditions for the development of autonomy at different phases
will aid the development of a healthy autonomous personality. And such features of
personality as independent decision-making and readiness to take responsibility for
decisions are developed in the child beginning with the age of two, and also later
when the child attends lower primary school, between the ages of six and twelve.
According to psychological research, not only can autonomy be promoted among
young learners but it in fact should be promoted, as it is in line with the child’s
natural development. Neglecting or failing to incorporate autonomy while working
with children can have negative effects as far as the child’s development is
concerned.
4 Young-Learner Autonomy: An Attempt to Define

the Concept
There are a lot of definitions of autonomy, some of them stressing the person’s
independence, some responsibility, while others decision-making, freedom of
choice or independent thinking. The most widely known definition of autonomy
was given by Holec (1981, p. 3), who regards autonomy mainly from the point of
view of the learner’s responsibility as “the ability to take charge of one’s learning”.
According to Holec, learner autonomy requires taking responsibility for “all the
decisions concerning all aspects of learning” such as the aims, contents, methods,
techniques and evaluation (1981, p. 3). Little (1991, p. 4) defines autonomy as “a
capacity for detachment, critical reflection, decision-making, and independent
action”. The model of autonomy presented by Little (2007) consists of three
components: learner involvement, learner reflection and authentic target language
use in which the first two are immersed.
Muszyńska (1991, p. 113) defines autonomy as “the ability to realize different
tasks, and the capability of taking charge of one’s actions, which means formulating
one’s aims, finding ways of achieving them, and also taking decisions concerning
oneself”. She describes two aspects of independence. The first one is connected
with self-reliance in simple daily routines such as getting dressed or eating, whereas
the other refers to taking charge of one’s actions and independent decision making.
There is yet another meaning of autonomy that should be taken into consider-
ation in this discussion. Klus-Stańska (2009a) calls it cognitive autonomy. It is
rooted in constructivism and relates to Piaget’s and Bruner’s understanding of
cognitive development of the child. Cognitive autonomy can be defined as “con-
ceptual and decisive independence of the learner in his attempts to construct mental
models of reality” (2009a, p. 61). Cognitively autonomous learners explore,
examine, discover and think creatively and independently, developing a number of
cognitive procedures (Okoń, 1997, pp. 10–11). Their activity is individualized,
manifold and varied and therefore unpredictable before a given lesson
(Klus-Stańska 2009b, p. 69). These learners are reflective, do not take the teacher’s
explanations or those offered in coursebooks for granted, try to find solutions
themselves and learn to cope with problems on their own. In some of his publi-
cations, Little (2003) also adds a similar element of learner autonomy, which he
calls independent thinking.
The issue which we might have to address here is which definition of autonomy
can be used to describe young-learner autonomy? It is an issue of crucial impor-
tance as the teacher’s understanding of the concept of autonomy influences directly
his or her classroom practices. If he or she defines young learner autonomy only in
terms of self-reliance in simple routines, this will be the only field in which children
can exercise autonomy in the classroom—when getting dressed, packing their own
bags or going to the toilet on their own. If the teacher believes that children are not
autonomous in the sense that they can take initiative and responsibility for the
process of their own learning and that they have not developed the capacity to act
independently yet, he or she will not allow them to take part in planning and will
structure all tasks for them in such a way that children are not involved in
decision-making. On the other hand, if the teacher defines autonomous learners as
pupils who are cognitively curious, she will involve them in a different kind of task.
5 Description of the Project
The discussion presented in this article is based on a Teaching young learners

educational project that was carried out at Gdańsk University Teacher Training
College between 2006 and 2010. The participants of the project were teacher
trainees who volunteered to take part and a group of young learners they taught.
The children were 5–7 years of age when the project started and 10–12 years of age
when it ended. The project lasted four academic years, but while some of the
children stayed with us for the whole of this time, there were also such who left
earlier or joined us on the way.
The children had two classes of English a week, one 60-min class and one
90-min class. The trainees had two additional 90-min teacher training sessions a
week. The main aim of the project was to incorporate the principles of autonomy in
teaching English into a young learner syllabus. As the main focus was learner
autonomy, it was also the principle of the teacher-training course. In practice, this
meant that the trainees had a great deal of freedom and could decide about many
aspects of the course: When they taught, who they collaborated with, or what
topics, materials and techniques they used. Some of this, however, had to be
negotiated with the young learners, who also enjoyed much freedom. The language
of instruction in both courses—for children and for teacher trainees—was English.
6 Principles of Young-Learner Autonomy
The principles of the course evolved as we progressed. The rules for fostering
learner autonomy that we developed were based on Little’s (2007) principles for
autonomous language learning. However, they were adapted according to the needs
of the age group.
6.1 Target Language as a Means of Communication
The most important principle introduced from the very beginning of the course was
the use of the target language, as we strongly believe that “language learning
depends crucially on language use” and the amount of language learnt by children
is directly related to “the range of roles that are available to them in the classroom”
(Little et al., 2002, p. 20). Also, we shared Little’s belief about the correlation
between the target language use and learner autonomy. As he put it “in language
classrooms the development of autonomy requires that learners use the target
language at once as medium of classroom communication, channel of learning, and
tool for reflection” (Little, 2003, p. 4). Therefore, all the trainees and myself used
only English when communicating with each other and with the children, not only
during lessons, but also during breaks or when meeting children outside the uni-
versity. Not surprisingly, there were some problems with this approach. Some
children did not feel secure at first, refused to take part in activities, and demanded
instructions in Polish. However, we decided to be consistent, spoke English and
waited. Using body language, facial expressions, flash cards, book pictures and
simple drawings, we managed to sustain communication with the learners. It did not
take long before the learners got used to the English language and from one lesson
to the next were able to understand more and more. They also started developing
strategies for coping with situations when they did not understand something. They
asked a lot of questions in Polish, we repeated them in English and answered them
also in English. They directed questions to trainee teachers but also to the children
who could understand more and who became interpreters for those who needed
clarification and help.
In teacher-learner interaction we managed to maintain conversations in English,

at least on our part. However, when children worked in groups, designing some-
thing, planning their work, solving a problem, or evaluating their work, it was more
natural for them to speak Polish. We did not try to impose the use of English in such
situations as we assumed that for some time it would be their only possible means
of effective communication. On many occasions, we took part in half-Polish,
half-English conversations, using caretaker talk: helping learners with their task,
translating when necessary, providing necessary structures or vocabulary, or scaf-
folding their attempts at using English. We did not pretend we did not understand
Polish but used caretaker talk, as it provides “a secure and supportive environment
which gives the children confidence to try out language” (Slattery & Willis, 2001,
p. 11). Caretaker talk helps learners in language acquisition as children can learn
only the language they hear around them. Scaffolding conversations with them by
paraphrasing in English what they have said in Polish, providing a correct version
of their attempts in English and presenting them with words and phrases they lack
gives them an opportunity to listen to English and, in effect, helps them develop
target language fluency that is “some way beyond their unaided capacity” (Little
et al., 2002, p. 20).
No matter how hard we tried to use English exclusively, there were situations,
very few, though, in which we had to switch to Polish. This happened, for example,
in emergency cases, when a child started crying or some children started fighting
with each other. Then it was more natural for us to respond quickly in the mother
tongue.
6.2 Learner Involvement: Freedom of Choice
Another principle of autonomous learning is learner empowerment. Learner

involvement increases motivation and can be achieved by shifting the focus from
the teacher to the learner and, consequently, from teaching to learning (Dam, 1995).
One of the possible ways of achieving this is transferring the responsibility for the
course elements from the teacher to learners, by giving students a greater degree of
freedom in decision making. However, what does it mean in practice, especially
when you work with young learners? To what extent can you let children decide
about what they do? How much freedom can you give them? These are the very
questions we had to keep asking ourselves from the beginning of the project.
We assumed that there are a number of issues we would not let the learners
decide. The aim of the course was to learn English, so any decisions that were
against this aim were not taken into consideration. Apart from that, we assumed that
autonomy does not entail anarchy, so we rejected any attempts to disrupt the course
of our lessons or disturb other learners. Any other suggestions about what to do,
how to do it, where to do it or who to do it with were considered. We took special
care to check that the learners’ choices were not superficial but genuine. Superficial
choices, such as, for example, choosing the color of the crayon to mark a line in a
task, do not make any difference to the learning process as it does not really matter
if the child chooses red or orange. Genuine choices bring a real change in the
learners’ attitude to learning. The choice could refer to the topic or the technique
used. Children could also decide about who they worked with as we assumed good
collaboration between learners would bring better results. We also agreed if a child
wanted to work alone. Another type of decisions made by learners considered the
time taken to do certain tasks—in class or at home—providing it did not interfere
with the lesson. The ways in which learner involvement was fostered in the project
are presented in the subsections below.
6.2.1 The Process Syllabus
One of the fields in which students could negotiate and practice decision-making
during the project was the course syllabus. We decided against following a con-
ventional syllabus and, therefore, against using a coursebook, to escape ‘the tyr-
anny’ of both. Instead, we developed a process syllabus. A syllabus gives
information about what is to be achieved and provides “a clear framework of
knowledge and capabilities selected to be appropriate to overall aims” (Breen,
2001, p. 151). Beyond any doubt, there are a lot of advantages of using a prescribed
syllabus. However, a clearly defined syllabus might be limiting to learners’
autonomy because it outlines the outcomes of the course very precisely and blocks
the possibility of introducing new topics and language areas that arise in the course
of work. Syllabuses that specify the course outcomes “fulfil a training function and
result in restricted competence”. On the other hand, process-oriented syllabuses
“are educative in function and lead to general competence” (Nunan, 1988, p. 43).
We negotiated parts of the syllabus with the learners, believing that negotiation is
directly related to learner independence and leads to learners taking greater
responsibility for the learning process. We also assumed that taking active part in
planning helps students gain a better perspective on what they do and aids them in
evaluating their learning afterwards.
Owing to the learners’ involvement in syllabus design numerous topics were
added to it, for example: children’s favorite music bands and their music, real
stories behind cartoon films, places they visited or would like to visit, their hobbies,
stories, favorite animals, favorite films, astronomy and physics. It is true that such
topics appear in language coursebooks but almost never in coursebooks for young
learners. Coursebook content for young learners is often infantilized, following a
commonly held belief that if the language skills of foreign language learners are
basic, then their intellectual potential and cognitive development will be equally
basic. As a result, seven and eight-year-old students are given tasks that are
appropriate for two-year-olds, and coursebook language does not exceed the level
of “I like pizza” and “The apple is red”. Thanks to the process syllabus the par-
ticipants of the course could learn incomparably more, acquired more sophisticated
vocabulary and sustained high motivation throughout the course. Figure 1 includes
an original text produced by a seven-year-old boy. There are some mistakes in the
text, but, undeniably, it communicates much more than coursebook based sentences
on planes, such as “A plane can fly” and “The plane goes vroom”.
6.2.2 Arousing Students’ Cognitive Curiosity
Another means of making students more involved in language learning is chal-

lenging them cognitively. Cognitively challenging tasks focus not only on the target
language but also develop learners’ reasoning, making them tackle concrete
problems. They are, for example, problem-solving activities, tasks with multiple
solutions, logical puzzles as well as riddles and mysteries. In such tasks, learners
give their own opinions and ideas, solve mysteries and problems, look for infor-
mation themselves and try to relate their work to their own experience. They may
also design their own tasks and puzzles for other students.
An example of such a task is interactive story-telling, incorporating some ele-
ments of computer games strategies and story-telling. Learners are presented with a
story, but, to find out what happens next, they have to look for clues, gain pass-
words and solve tasks. For example, after they found the letter presented in Fig. 2,
they had to identify pictures referring to highlighted phrases. On the back of each
picture there were a few words written and the children had to arrange them into a
logical whole. The sentence they came up with was another piece of instruction.
Another type of cognitively challenging tasks are those presenting new information
to students about the world, geography, biology, history or astronomy.
6.2.3 Logbooks
The idea of logbooks was taken from Dam’s (1995) program. Logbooks are dif-
ferent from notebooks in which learners write exercises from the coursebook or
copy sentences from the blackboard. They belong to the learners and only learners
decide what should go in them and what can be skipped. Therefore, they involve
the learner more and put the child in a central position. Learners might use logbooks
to write vocabulary they learnt during lessons, to draw or stick pictures, or to write
the homework assignment (given by the teacher or decided on by themselves).
Logbooks are an excellent way of keeping a written record of what was done in
class and in addition are a valuable source of information for the teacher and parents
about students’ progress, interests and needs. They provide an opportunity for
communication not only between students but also between students and the tea-
cher (Dam, 1995, p. 40). In our class, in some cases there was a real communicative
exchange going on between the teacher and the learner—the teacher commented on
a text or picture, asking some question, and the child responded by writing or
drawing something else, which was then commented on by the teacher.
My favorite ship is Quin Merry 2. My favorite plane is Airbus A 380. I like German
LUFTHANSA, poland LOT, ENGLAND WIZZAIR, poland CENTRAL WINGS C-S, Grece
HELIOS. My favorite is POLISH COST GUARD and U.S. AIR FORCE, F. 16 fajting falcon,
HARIER F18, HELICOPTER BLACK hauk
Fig. 1 An example of a text produced by a seven-year-old boy
Hello,
This is a letter for you:
there is an orange cat who doesn’t have a hat
he isn’t alone and he’s got a green phone
he’s got a friend who can fly
I don’t know why…
the friend is red with a white head
they have a key that is small to open the door.
Fig. 2 A letter used in an interactive story-telling task, designed by A. Christa, a trainee teacher
taking part in the project
Fig. 3 An example of a task

developed by learners
Find the word.
W L CC UO FE E TK h g ga in p sa
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
2:1, 15:3, 14:2, 5*2, 14-2, 3*5, 18-1, 21-2,
10*2
The most valuable use of logbooks was the extra homework—homework

decided on by the learners as it gave them an opportunity to express themselves in
English and showed their genuine interests. Text production is an important ele-
ment in the process of the internalization of an additional language. Little et al.
(2002) appreciate the role writing plays in language learning as it creates a number
of practice opportunities for learners who can write and rewrite, “inspect and
re-inspect the same ideas, coming at them from many different angles and in many
different frames of mind”, which makes them concentrate on language and content
at the same time (Little et al., 2002, pp. 21–22). Most typical pieces of work the
learners developed were texts about themselves, their families and friends, mini
dictionaries, stories and cartoon strips but also tasks for other children (e.g., puz-
zles, crosswords, secret code messages and many others). Figure 3 presents an
example of a puzzle for children that was designed by a seven-year-old boy, the
same boy who presented the text about planes described earlier in this article. The
trainees spent a long time trying to solve the puzzle, but the children did it in no
time.
The extra homework tasks were highly motivating for the learners as they cre-
ated a real communicative need—they searched for language to express their own
thoughts in writing. Early attempts were very simple and very often contained lists
of words, picture dictionaries or texts learners copied form food packages or
advertisements. Learners also followed each other’s ideas and produced similar text
types. For example, if one child described her favorite doll, five more would do the
same the next time. Later the learners got more and more creative in language use,
they looked up the words they needed in dictionaries or coined some words, and
they also used a greater variety of structures.
6.2.4 Collaborative Language Learning
There are at least two arguments that can be used in favor of collaborative language
learning in a young learner class. The first one refers to the social-interactive nature
of learning and the social development theory by Vygotsky, expanded by Bruner.
Vygotsky (1978) coined the concept of zone of proximal development (ZPD),
defined as “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by
independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined
through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more cap-
able peers” (p. 86). The definition implies that learning takes place through inter-
action with more knowledgeable others on the basis of what the learner already
knows. Bruner, following the work of Vygotsky, introduced the concept of scaf-
folding, which explains how other people (i.e., more knowledgeable adults, parents,
teachers, or peers) can help a child understand and solve problems by mediating the
world for him or her (Cameron, 2001, p. 8). There are some more arguments
supporting the social-interactive nature of learning in Bandura’s (1977) social
learning theory and Lave’s situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1990).
Another argument supporting the idea of collaborative learning is connected
with the content of a language class—the language. The main aim of using any
language is communication, an exchange of ideas and an attempt to understand
others. As Cameron (2001, p. 38) put it, “underlying any social interaction,
including scaffolding, is the human desire to make contact with other people, to
cross the gap between their thoughts and our own”. By communicating with others,
we try to understand them, and the means of doing so is the language which, in a
language class, becomes both the means and the objective of learning.
Being convinced of the beneficial effect of collaborative learning and believing
that language is learnt best through social interaction with other language learners,
we made collaboration one of the principles of the course and involved learners in
pair and group work activities for most of the class time. They worked in teams on
group projects, designed posters, wrote stories, letters, picture descriptions and play
scripts, rehearsed mini dialogues and plays, and took part in many team games and
competitions. They would very often switch into Polish when they discussed,
negotiated or planned their work. This grew out of the natural need to communicate.
However, after some time, thanks to scaffolding offered by the trainee teachers, the
learners were more and more eager to attempt communicating in English, and in the
final year they reminded each other “In English, please!”.
6.2.5 The Autonomy Prime Time
As the objective of the course was to foster learner autonomy, we assumed that
decision-making was the crucial element. Therefore, we introduced the autonomy
prime time, half an hour, once a week. This was the students’ time, intended for
spontaneous play—they could do whatever they wanted to, providing they did it in
English. There was a list of activities they could choose from. We gathered a library
of real books for young learners (not abridged)—the learners could read them
themselves or ask the trainees to read to them. We also had a collection of games
that students could play in pairs or groups. There were original board games, bingo,
jigsaw puzzles, but also games prepared by the trainees or the learners, such as
dominoes, memo games, crosswords, cartoon strips and others. Some children
decided to finish the task they had started during the lesson, but most of them either
listened to book reading or played games. However, book reading was always their
favorite activity. It is not surprising that this was the favorite part of the lesson for
most of the young learners. They associated lessons with learning and the autonomy
time with playing and felt this time belonged only to them. They did not have to
negotiate what they wanted to do with anybody; they could make individual
decisions and that made them true ‘owners’ of the time.
6.3 Learner Reflection
Language learners can be engaged in two kinds of reflection: metalinguistic and

metacognitive (Ridley, 2003, p. 78). Both types should be interrelated: Students
analyzing the language start reflecting on what they know, what they have learnt
and what they can do to progress. As Little (2003, p. 17) points out, learner
reflection is related to the learner empowerment principle as “it is impossible
consciously to accept responsibility for anything, and then act on that responsibility,
without thinking about what you are doing”. Learners who start planning their
work, choosing topics and materials, and designing their own work, should start
reflecting on their work and progress, hopefully taking their reflections into account
in their future planning. Also, learner reflection should be connected with the
principle of target language use—doing it in English gives learners yet another
opportunity to practice the language. Learner reflection proved to be the most
problematical principle to implement. This was because, firstly, the learners’ lan-
guage level was very basic and it was extremely difficult to do it in English, and,
secondly, the students’ were reluctant to think back, reflect and analyze.
Reflection on language was incorporated into the input stages of lessons by
bringing in elements of guided discovery techniques and inductive teaching. Young
learners proved to be very observant as far as language forms were concerned,
although, of course, some of them were more perceptive than others and some never
noticed anything. The more observant learners spotted regularities of grammar,
were able to explain rules, and noticed similarities and differences between forms
and vocabulary items. Unsurprisingly, we observed those were the students who
progressed faster than others.
Metacognitive reflection sessions were not done on a regular basis. We started
with a questionnaire asking individual students what they did in class, what they
learnt during the last lesson or a few lessons, whether they liked it or not, and about
the possible usefulness of the language learnt, noting down the answers for them. It
was time-consuming and did not bring the expected results. Learners were not
willing to answer these questions, saying they “don’t know” or “don’t remember”,
or commenting that it was boring and “a waste of time”. They were motivated to
work more—play more games or listen to more stories and therefore they con-
sidered reflection a nuisance that took precious lesson time. Later on we tried to do
the reflection in English and we decided to use I can/I can’t statements. These also
did not prove of much use as learners responded without much thought, with most
of them choosing I can all the time. The most beneficial for the learners were the
‘imposed reflection’ questions we asked them when they faced some problems. For
example, we asked them to think about tasks they did in the past, how they did
them, what went wrong then and how they managed to complete the tasks anyway.
Looking back, I think we should have tried harder to explain the value of regular
reflection to our learners. However, we faced a situation where these reflection
sessions lowered our students’ motivation to study English. They kept asking us not
to do “those boring questions” that were “always the same”. As a result, we decided
to skip the reflection sessions to keep the learners happy and motivated. Although
we felt that we failed on the planned reflection component of the course, we were
able to see spontaneous reflection while the learners were working on different
tasks. They were very good at giving reasons why they wanted to do a particular
task, saying they were good at it, they enjoyed doing it, or explaining that they liked
the written homework because then they could remember the spelling of words
better. They were also very good at explaining why they chose to work with
particular students, focusing not on personal preferences but also on skills, the
strong and weak points of other students, and task objectives. It all proves that
young learners are capable of reflection, and they are observant and analytical;
however, the reflection session should have been arranged in a different way,
appropriately for their age, and when the children felt a need to reflect facing a new
problem.
7 Conclusions
Young learners possess a lot of features that are typical of autonomous learners.
They are cognitively curious as well as eager to learn new things and explore the
world around them. They are intrinsically motivated, especially if they are cogni-
tively engaged. They are capable of learning how to take responsibility for their
own learning, and how to plan, implement the plan and evaluate their progress (cf.
Wawrzyniak-Śliwska, 2005). Introducing the principles of learner autonomy in
young learner education is undeniably possible, thanks to young learners’ natural
inclinations to be independent, their cognitive inquisitiveness to explore the world
and their natural ability to question everything around them. It brings notable
benefits in terms of their language proficiency and positive attitude towards learning
in general and learning a foreign language in particular. It gives young learners the
feeling of accomplishment and success, fosters their intrinsic motivation, provides
cognitive challenge, makes them inquisitive in search of information, enhances their
mental abilities and develops their feelings of agency and responsibility.
However, the principles of autonomy are rarely implemented in lower primary
education. Although the main aim of this article was not to seek the reasons for this
state of affairs, some of them should perhaps be considered. First of all, the decision
to foster learner autonomy requires a shift in the teacher’s beliefs about the nature
of learning, and teacher and learner roles in institutionalized education. Traditional
foreign language education, based on a published coursebook hinders the use of
methodology focusing on the learner, learner-centered teaching and the imple-
mentation of the principles of autonomy. A syllabus based on a coursebook does
not take account of learners’ interests, narrows down the amount of negotiation
concerning issues connected with the content of learning, and requires all students
to work at the same time and pace, thus limiting their freedom and autonomy.
Another obstacle impeding fostering learner autonomy are the teacher’s beliefs and
convictions about what autonomy is, what it depends on, what the benefits or the
disadvantages of it are, who deserves to be autonomous, and who is its ‘owner’—
the teacher or the young learner. Yet another serious problem hindering the
implementation of the principles of autonomy is teachers’ reluctance to use the
target language with young learners. Most lower primary teaching of English is
done in Polish. Learners who only acquire some lexical sets of limited variation, a
few grammar structures and no communicative skills cannot take charge of their
learning of a foreign language. Teaching English to young learners in Poland does
not take into account the principles of autonomy, not because children are not
autonomous human beings or because they are not mature enough or clever enough
to become autonomous, but because institutionalized education, coursebooks and

teachers with their strong views against learner autonomy do not allow children to
exercise their independence.
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Learner Autonomy: The Role
of Educational Materials in Fostering
Self-evaluation
Halina Wiśniewska
Abstract The development of learner autonomy has become one of the tenets of
present-day foreign language teaching methodology. In effect, the importance of
giving learners opportunities for choosing learning materials, conditions and
methods, is currently stressed. Such an approach to developing the mastery of target
language skills is likely to grow in significance as a lot of educational institutions
are beginning to incorporate independent learning into their curricula in order to
meet the needs and expectations of adult learners. Gaining knowledge and
upgrading professional skills, not only by attending regular teacher-directed courses
but also as a result of independent learning, can be a treasured experience. Every
educational success requires the evaluation of progress that is made at different
stages of the learning process. In the case of self-directed learning, a formal test or
examination is not always available, sufficient or necessary. Learning materials that
allow evaluating language skills could sometimes meet the needs of learners much
better than a ready-made test or examination. In Poland, the most popular resources
of this type are revision books, or self-study educational materials, whose main aim
is to consolidate the second language knowledge that learners already possess. The
aim of the article is to present the results of a study that investigated the popularity
and usefulness of revision books as a tool in promoting self-assessment.
1 Introduction
The times when the teaching process was regarded as an art of passing information
from the teacher to the learner belong to the past. In the new approach to foreign
language teaching, the focus of attention is not on the teacher but the learner. It is
hard to develop communicative competence without the learner making an indi-
vidual contribution to it. In other words, the teacher cannot teach effectively without
the initiative and creativity of the learner (Mrożek, 2009, p. 176). To be an active
H. Wiśniewska (&)
Kozmiński University, Warsaw, Poland
e-mail: halinannawu@gmail.com

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-07764-2_6
86 H. Wiśniewska
element of the instructional process, the learner must be able to have an impact on
such issues as the contents, methods and tools of teaching. At the same time, as the
dynamics of the labor market make it difficult to predict the future linguistic needs
of the learner, the methodology of teaching English as a foreign language should
aim at developing learners’ capability of self-directed or autonomous learning.
Generally, autonomous learning is understood as learners’ ability to take charge
or control of their own learning (Holec, 1981). However, as Little (2000, p. 65)
explains, “autonomy in language learning depends on the development and exercise
of a capacity for detachment, critical reflection, decision-making and independent
action; autonomous learners assume responsibility for determining the purpose,
content, rhythm and method of their learning, monitoring its progress and evalu-
ating its outcomes”. Robinson argues (1980, p. 85) that “the strategy of autonomous
learning was established to cater for those (adult) students who could not come to
regular classes because of family or business commitments, distance, aversion to
standard classroom atmosphere, or because of the urgency of their need for a very
concentrated course”. Adult learners start learning languages or wish to improve
foreign language proficiency for a clearly defined purpose, and they want to be able
to make practical use of their knowledge. To be motivated, they need feedback on
their achievement at all stages of the learning process, although not all of them
require formal documentation of their mastery of target language skills. Sometimes
formal assessment is just not wanted. Dam (1990, p. 16) believes that the learner is
autonomous when she or he is ready to choose aims and purposes, set goals, choose
materials, methods and tasks, and choose criteria for evaluation. With this in mind,
the aim of this paper is to determine to what extent the use of revision books can
help learners self-evaluate their language skills.
2 Materials for Self-evaluation in Foreign Language

Teaching
Learner autonomy was one of the main issues dealt with by the Council of Europe
working groups even before the 1980s. To help learners develop the skill of
independent learning, two documents were published, that is the Common
European framework of reference for languages (CEFR; Council of Europe, 2001)
and the European language portfolio (ELP, Council of Europe, 2011). As Morrow
(2004, p. 7) explains, “[t]he contents of the Framework are therefore designed
principally to act as a frame of reference in terms of which different qualifications
can be described, different language learning objectives can be identified, and the
basis of different achievement standards can be set out”. From the very beginning,
in the discussions of the nature of autonomous learning, self-assessment was
regarded as its integral part (Holec, 1981). This is made clear on the website for
ELP where we can read that “[t]he European Language Portfolio (ELP) was
developed by the Language Policy Division of the Council of Europe in order to
Learner Autonomy: The Role of Educational Materials … 87
support the development of learner autonomy, plurilingual and intercultural

awareness and competence and to allow users record their language learning
achievements and their experience of learning languages and using languages. In an
ELP all competence is valued, whether it was gained inside or outside formal
education” (Council of Europe, 2011).
Both of the documents, that is the CEFR and the ELP, widened the range of tools
used for evaluation of learners’ language competence, which now encompasses:
• traditional tests (e.g., summative assessment, used in most traditional and
standardized tests taking place at the end of a predetermined period; formative
assessment, used mainly in alternative assessment methods);
• alternative assessment (e.g., reliance on student progress cards, rating scales,
checklists, questionnaires and learner diaries, the ELP).
There are two alternative assessment options offered by the Council of Europe,
based on the descriptors of the CEFR (Council of Europe, 2001):
• achievement assessment, which allows evaluating the achievement of specific
learning objectives;
• proficiency assessment, which aims to check how the learner can practically
apply the knowledge or skills possessed.
The former is needed mainly by teachers while the latter is required by employers
and the learners themselves. In the words of Brown (2004, p. 279), “[t]o set
traditional testing and alternatives against each other is counterproductive. All kinds
of assessment, from formal conventional procedures, to informal and possibly
unconventional tasks, are needed to assemble information on students”. In the
opinion of European experts (Council of Europe, 2001, p. 191), “the main potential
for self-assessment, however, is in its use as a tool for motivation and awareness
rising: helping learners to appreciate their strengths, recognise their weaknesses and
orient their learning more effectively”. Alternative assessment can be valuable in
both teacher- and learner-directed learning process.
In teacher-directed learning, however, the role of the teacher is to choose
materials that cater best to the needs of individual learners, also with respect to
monitoring their progress and evaluation. Autonomous learners may have to make
this decision themselves. As autonomy in language learning can be exercised in
various learning environments, not all methodologies and tools used for large-scale
and institutionalized teaching are efficient and reliable in every single situation.
Self-assessment may require tools that can be employed by the learner without the
help of the teacher. For inexperienced learners, using CEFR descriptors on their
own, without some instruction, may be challenging. As Morrow (2004, p. 7)
explains, “[t]here is little to guide the first-time reader around the material; the print
is small, the layout dense and ‘heavy’, the language in itself is ponderous and often
convoluted; specialist terminology abounds, and is often used in ways which seem
idiosyncratic—and there are seemingly endless tables and descriptors whose rela-
tionship to one another is very difficult to discern”. On other occasions, descriptors
88 H. Wiśniewska
may be inappropriate to the age range or lack specific educational focus. For
instance, “(…) the self-assessment descriptors, quite deliberately, do not refer to
grammar or structures. They speak about how you communicate, and how well you
understand text and speech—the grammar used is a part of your performance of the
task” (Keddle, 2004, p. 43).
Although the concept of autonomous learning has been discussed and imple-
mented for years, insufficient effort is being made to provide learners with materials
promoting the new approach with respect to every aspect of the language learning
process. Materials suitable for self-evaluation of foreign language skills are still
scarce on the market. Additionally, in many cases, titles recommended for
self-evaluation, either by the authors or publishers, are not of real use for learners.
In Poland, books that are designed to revise and assess knowledge in a given field
of study are known as repetytoria, or revision books.
3 Definition of Repetytorium
According to Kopaliński’s (n.d.) dictionary, the word repetytorium derives from

Latin words repetitio and revisare. Their English equivalent is the verb to revise,
which in English dictionaries is defined in the following ways:
• to read and learn information that you have studied in order to prepare for an
examination (Revise, 2007);
• to study again something that you have learned, in preparation for an exam
(Cambridge advanced learner’s dictionary);
• to look at again; to look over again with the intent to improve or amend (Revise,
n.d.);
• to look at again for the detection of errors; to re[e]xamine; to review; to look
over with care for correction (Revise, 1996).
The analysis of the above definitions allows one to assume that revision is
understood as another look at something (information) with the intention to identify
gaps or mistakes, and to fill in or correct them; in other words, to update or expand
one’s information or knowledge in the field of a given discipline, very often for the
purpose of an examination. In English, books that serve purposes similar to those of
a repetytorium are commonly called revision books (including revision guides or
self-study guides). Therefore, in what follows the Polish term repetytorium is
replaced by the phrase revision book.
Taking into consideration the etymology of the word, a revision book is edu-
cational material whose aim is to facilitate one or more of the following:
• revising or/and consolidating the already possessed knowledge;
• identifying gaps in the learner’s existing knowledge and filling those gaps;
• expanding the learner’s existing knowledge.
It is complementary material, not designed to be a primary source of new infor-

mation. The distinguishing feature of this type of material is its function, which is
self-educational, self-controlling and self-corrective. The informative function is
not the main one (as in the case of a proper textbook). Thus, the evaluation of a
revision book does not have to, and, in fact, should not be based on the same criteria
as the assessment of other teaching materials, in particular, a regular textbook.
Revision books are common in many disciplines, although, in the case of foreign
language learning, they can be used with some restrictions as they are not equally
useful for checking or revising all elements of the user’s communicative compe-
tence. They are primarily suitable for evaluating the mastery of grammar and lexis.
Their use is rather limited in the case of testing writing skills and clearly ineffective
in the case of speaking skills. In effect, as shown in Fig. 1, three main types of
revision books are used in foreign language study, namely grammar revision books,
vocabulary revision books, and vocabulary and grammar revision books.
Despite the growing demand for materials that allow language learners to meet
their individual needs, interests and preferences, and a plethora of titles including
this type of material, only a few can be recommended. For independent learners
who choose materials without the teacher’s guidance, the cover description of the
aim of the book is often the only tip with respect to the decision whether to buy it or
not. Also, as Tomlinson (1988, p. 5) points out, “materials are often evaluated in an
ad hoc, impressionistic way, which tends to favour materials which have face
validity (i.e., which conform to people’s expectations of what materials should look
like) and which are visually appealing”. The choice of learning materials may affect
the final output of the learning process; for this reason, it should not be made
intuitively. A brief analysis of the content of revision books available on the market
shows that there is no consensus concerning what they should include and how they
should be structured. The question to be posed is whether and to what extent
revision books meet the requirements of autonomous learning.
Revision books
General language Language for Specific Purposes

revision books revision books
grammar vocabulary grammar and vocabulary
Fig. 1 Types of language revision books

90 H. Wiśniewska
4 The Study
Evaluation of the role and effectiveness of revision books is not easy as little
information about this type of educational material can be found in the literature. In
order to gain more insight into this type of material and its role in the language
learning process, a two-stage empirical study was undertaken. The research ques-
tions were the following:
1. What is the role of this kind of educational material in foreign language
learning?
2. What criteria should be used for the evaluation of this type of material to ensure
that it is useful?
In order to answer these questions, it was necessary:
• to check the popularity of this type of material;
• to suggest evaluation criteria;
• to conduct quantitative and qualitative analyses of the structure and content of
this type of material.
4.1 Methods
One of the assumptions made at the beginning of the study was that revision books
are a popular type of didactic material. To verify this assumption a questionnaire
consisting of open and closed-ended questions was distributed among 128 students
of business-related studies. The respondents, enrolled in undergraduate, graduate
and postgraduate courses, were chosen from among those whose general English
fluency was at least intermediate. Most of the participants had gained their language
knowledge in more than one educational institution. They were asked whether they
use or ever used revision books and for what purposes they do so, for evaluating
which language skills they find revision books the most useful, and what types of
exercises they consider the most effective in such materials. Selecting more than
one option was possible for some closed-ended questions.
The aim of the next stage of the research project was the evaluation of the
effectiveness of revision books, with emphasis being placed on the usefulness of
such resources. This required a detailed analysis of selected revision books avail-
able on the market. However, as a revision book is not a regular textbook, no
ready-made textbook evaluation checklist seemed appropriate. Drawing on
Skrzypczak (1996, p. 59), an assumption was made that the content (what the book
includes) and structure (how the content is presented) may be crucial. Twelve
textbook evaluation checklists taken from Breen and Candlin (1987),
Table 1 Frequency of occurrence of revision book evaluation criteria on selected evaluation lists
Criterion Number of lists that include the criterion
Elements of structure 9
Elements of graphics 6
Gradation of material 5
Diversity of material 4
Authenticity of material 6
Consideration for learners’ needs and interests 5
Development of cognitive skills 4
Cunningsworth (1995), Grant (1987), Komorowska (2003), McDonough and Shaw

(2003), Sheldon (1988), Tucker (1975), Ur (1996), and Williams (1983) were
analysed in search for criteria relating to structure and content. The most common
were the following, which are also mentioned in Table 1, together with the fre-
quency of their occurrence.
• elements of structure;
• elements of graphics;
• gradation of material;
• diversity of material (exercises);
• authenticity of material;
• consideration for learners’ needs and interests (range of topics);
• development of cognitive skills.
Taking into account the defining feature of a revision book (i.e., providing
opportunities for consolidating existing knowledge and identifying potential gaps),
the final list of criteria chosen for analysis was modified so that it included elements
believed to be crucial for materials designed to cater to the needs of independent
learners. Following this modification, the list encompassed the following criteria:
• attractive layout;
• typical elements of structure;
• easy navigation;
• number of exercises;
• types of exercises;
• variety of activities within a unit;
• gradation of exercise difficulty;
• development of cognitive skills.
The checklist was used for the quantitative and qualitative analyses of six books
that were either recommended for self-evaluation by their authors, or their title
suggested they could be used for this purpose. All the included revision books can
be considered as popular on the market.
92 H. Wiśniewska
4.2 Results
As the analysis demonstrated, a revision book is very popular as learning material

among language learners. The vast majority of respondents (82 %) claimed that
they use or, depending on the level of language competence, used revision books to
develop their foreign language skills, and only a minority (12 %) reported never
having used them. As can be seen from Fig. 2, 43 % of those surveyed used this
resource to revise the material needed for some examination, 38 % used it to
expand their target language knowledge, and only about 14 % reported employing
it for self-assessment. This result shows that the revision book serves it primary
purpose, which is the revision and consolidation of the material studied. Relatively
few learners reported using it as a self-evaluation tool, though. This might suggest
that self-assessment is still not very popular among students attending traditional
teacher-directed language classes. Revision books were used as well for the eval-
uation of others, mainly by postgraduate respondents who were practicing language
teachers.
Language learners find this type of material useful or very useful in revising
vocabulary (95 %) and grammar (74 %). The next purpose, namely revising both
vocabulary and grammar, was given mainly in relation to Languages for Specific
Purposes (LSP). In the same context, some respondents mentioned the need for
revision books to also assess some professional skills, such as, for example, tele-
phoning, negotiating and presenting. It seems that these learners would like to
revise typical lexical elements used in these situations, which can be regarded as a
form of vocabulary revision. It also indicates that learners do not quite understand
the nature and limitations of this type of learning material.
The participants’ preferences concerning the types of exercises that should be
included in a revision book because of their usefulness are included in Table 2. The
results indicate that the types of exercises indicated as the most useful by the
greatest number of students were those involving translation (52), matching
(49) and creating collocations (44). Between 20 and 30 of the respondents recog-
nized the effectiveness of gap-filling (37), synonyms/antonyms (34) and questions
(32). True-false exercises were considered as the least useful by far as only two of
the students selected this option.
Fig. 2 Reasons for using In what situations did you use a revision book?
revision books
0%
Before an examination
For self-assessment
38% 43%
For assessment of other people
To complete/expand knowledge
14% Other reasons

5%
Table 2 The most useful types of exercises in vocabulary revision books according to
participants
Type of exercise Number of participants selecting this type
Translation 52
Matching 49
Creating collocations 44
Gap-filling 37
Synonyms/antonyms 34
Questions 32
Identifying acronyms 28
Multiple choice 24
Grouping 20
True-false 5
4.3 Discussion
4.3.1 The Content of a Revision Book Must Cater for the Learner’s
Needs
Adult learners need materials that can intensify and streamline the learning process.
They want to be sure that the language they are learning is the language they will
need the most in real-life situations. The teaching process can be intensified thanks
to a more careful selection of the contents of educational materials. The most
predictable and accurate choice of material can be seen in grammar revision books.
It is not surprising, as the number of grammatical elements that learners need to
master is relatively stable and easy to define. The list of items may vary slightly in
LSP revision books; however, such titles are rare as specialists generally agree that
“Languages for Special Purposes do not imply any ‘specialist’ grammar or pho-
netics” (Grucza, 2008, p. 18).
Much more problematic is the choice of the content in vocabulary revision
books. The qualitative analysis of the selected vocabulary revision guides reveals
that in many cases the selection of topics as well as lexical elements is purely
accidental. One of the initial research assumptions was that content analysis would
be possible when a list of topics that are shared by the selected revision books is put
together. It turned out, however, that such a list could not be compiled due to the
diversity of themes included in the books. This indicates that the choice reflects
more the author’s individual preference than the real needs of the learner.
Such materials do not meet the expectations of the learner who needs to know
lexical elements that are the most frequently used or are the most specific to a given
field of study. Modern materials should include high-frequency language elements
excerpted from authentic corpus texts. Corpus studies provide information not only
about the most frequently used single words but multi-word units, such as com-
pounds, collocations, noun phrases and acronyms. Without falling back on such
94 H. Wiśniewska
resources, the authors of teaching materials select lexical input in an intuitive way;
some words and phrases are redundant (rarely used in real communication),
whereas others (crucial because of their high frequency) are missing. This is one of
the greatest weaknesses of both general language and LSP vocabulary revision
books. In order to improve the situation, the decision concerning what to include
should be made after consulting the available frequency lists in the case of general
language, and seeking advice from specialists in specific subjects in the case of
LSP.
4.3.2 A Revision Book Requires Certain Types of Exercises
Although the primary objective of a revision book is to facilitate the revision and
consolidation of target language knowledge, such a goal cannot be achieved if the
exercises are boring and mechanical. Autonomous learners look for materials that
will allow them to use the knowledge and educational experience they possess. In
other words, they need cognitively challenging tasks. The analysis revealed that
revision books vary in the quantity and quality of exercises, but the difference does
not depend on the level of language fluency for which the material is designed.
Some authors seem to prefer closed exercises, while others opt for open ones. It
should be remembered that open exercises are considered to be more demanding as
they require greater reliance on productive skills. There is also an insufficient
number of tasks including graphics, which can be a useful evaluation tool. As
Brown (2004, p. 211) points out, “[t]he act of comprehending graphics includes the
linguistic performance of oral or written interpretations, comments, questions, etc.
This implies a process of information transfer from one skill to another”.
As Dudley-Evans & St John (1998, p. 178) comment: “[w]e should make
learners think when they do an exercise. An exercise that requires some pulling
together of ideas from different sources, some drawing on the learners’ own
knowledge, or even some simple calculation is much more challenging than a
purely mechanical exercise, and can both increase motivation and improve the
chances of retention of the target language or skill. Again this should not happen all
the time: we also need to vary the amount of challenging material and the demands
that it makes on the learner”. In practice, this means that every structural unit of a
revision book should include exercises of different types and different levels of
difficulty. As many of them as possible should be cognitively demanding and
require learner engagement. Additionally, to give the learner a chance to choose
exercises which are the most suitable for him or her, such exercises should be
graded according to the level of knowledge as well as engagement required for their
completion. As Dudley-Evans & St John point out (1998, p. 179), “grading is
concerned with the amount of support provided to enable learners to do a set of
exercises”. They draw on Nunes (1992) when they suggest that activities can be
presented at three levels: unsupported, partially supported and fully supported. The
level of difficulty can be marked descriptively or graphically. The inclusion of
materials representing different levels of difficulty are in line with the idea of the
individualization of the learning process.
It needs to be emphasized, however, that the choice of exercises that can appear
in the revision books is limited because of its very particular purpose. As a result, a
revision book cannot benefit from all techniques that are effectively used in other
forms of language teaching. The primary factor that is to be considered when
deciding on the type of exercises is the aim of the book, that is, what aspects of
target language competence are to be practiced. For example, some tasks can be
more appropriate for revision of vocabulary than others. Matching exercises allow
the revision of a large number of lexical elements in a short time. An additional
advantage of this type of activity is the usually clear, unambiguous answer that can
be given in the answer key section. On the other hand, translation exercises,
although most favored the most by learners according to the survey results, are
seldom used in revision books for some reasons. One of them is that they require
the use of the learner’s mother tongue, which cannot be used in materials addressed
to ‘global learners’. Another reason is that there may be more than one correct
answer, and it may be impossible to give all the alternatives in the key. The results
of the research show, however, that learners rank this type of exercises as the most
efficient ones. An alternative is to include tasks that require the translation of a part
of a sentence, as in this example:
Translate into English the Polish parts of the sentences.
1. Proces rekrutacji [the recruitment process] will be a waste of time and money if it is not
based on dokładnej analizie stanowiska i opisie pracy [a careful analysis of the position
and description of job requirements].
2. He is said, że został mianowany na to stanowisko [to have been given that position]
only because there were żadnych innych kandydatów ubiegających się o tę posadę [no
other applicants].
4.3.3 A Revision Book Requires a Special Structure
As self-study material, a revision book is a very useful self-evaluation source for

autonomous learning. However, in order to serve this purpose well, it must have a
very user-friendly structure. It should, first of all, be ‘easy to use’. The analysis
revealed that in many cases finding a particular exercise required going through the
whole content of the revision book. In others, navigation was relatively easy only
on the level of the main structural units. The books that allow students to locate the
required exercises quickly and with no or very little effort are rare. All of this
indicates that, in order to be easy to use, a revision book should include:
• explicit list of content;
• clear task instructions followed by examples;
• answer key;
• alphabetical index.
96 H. Wiśniewska
Some revision books have special sections introducing additional information

useful for task completion or simply extending the learner’s knowledge of a par-
ticular language problem.
5 Conclusion
Autonomous learners, taking responsibility for the outcomes of their learning must
be provided with opportunities for unassisted self-assessment of the language skills
or the general mastery of the target language. In the words of Rubdy (2003, p. 38),
“[b]y asking the students to assess their own learning, the teacher promotes
autonomy by training them to become aware of their learning processes. This helps
the students internalize the required criteria for acceptable performance both with
regard to the curriculum and real life situations, and leads to a more realistic view of
their actual skills”. Despite a number of tools and techniques that can be used for
self-assessment, not many of them are suitable for those who need or want to do it
without the help of the teacher. Revision books can be a beneficial option to choose.
The popularity of this type of educational material among learners at various levels
of language proficiency is considerable despite the skeptical opinions on revision
books that can be sometimes heard from teachers and language teaching specialists.
In general, the principles of the communicative approach are against selective
evaluation assessing receptive skills without meaningful context, as in real com-
municative situations the meaning can be affected by context.
The research project whose aim was to evaluate the popularity and usefulness of
revision books shows that their authors exercise too much freedom with respect to
both content and structure, which significantly affects the quality of revision books.
However, as Hutchinson (1987, p. 96) observes, “(…) evaluation is a matter of
judging the fitness of something for a particular purpose. Given a certain need, and
in the light of the resources available, which out of a number of possibilities can
represent the best solution? Evaluation is, then, concerned with relative merit. There
is no absolute good or bad—only degrees of fitness for the required purpose”. For
this reason, to serve its primary objective so often advertised by their authors and
publishers on book covers, revision books should be written by individuals who
understand the needs of autonomous learners.
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Student-Generated Vocabulary Tests
as a Way of Fostering Autonomy
Aleksandra Jankowska and Michał Jankowski
Abstract Students at the advanced level of foreign language study often find it
difficult to get motivated to work on their vocabulary development, because they
believe that the knowledge of lexis they have at this stage makes it possible for
them to express most meanings. They also know most, if not all, of the high
frequency words and thus should concentrate on low frequency and academic
vocabulary. Such vocabulary is more difficult to acquire due to the fact that items
belonging to those two categories do not appear often enough in the input to which
students are exposed to be learned incidentally. Because of this, some degree of
explicit learning seems necessary. One of the many ways of motivating students to
concentrate on vocabulary that a teacher can use is systematic review and testing.
Even in this case, however, students often believe that the knowledge they already
possess will be enough to get at least a pass mark. The present paper describes a
procedure in which it is the students themselves who are responsible for selecting
vocabulary items to be tested as well as providing their definitions and example
sentences. As a result, a database of items is created from which tests and other
materials can easily be generated. It is believed that in this case it is the process of
working on the database rather than test-taking which is more valuable not only as a
tool for vocabulary development but also as a way of fostering students’ autonomy.
1 Introduction
Although the place of vocabulary in different language teaching methods has been
changing over the years with either vocabulary or grammar taking the primary role, it
seems that in recent decades the importance of vocabulary has been firmly established
as can be illustrated by the often quoted statement by Wilkins (1972, p. 111):
A. Jankowska (&) M. Jankowski

Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland
e-mail: ajank@amu.edu.pl
M. Jankowski
e-mail: mjank@wa.amu.edu.pl

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-07764-2_7
100 A. Jankowska and M. Jankowski
“While without grammar little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be
conveyed”. Further support for the centrality of vocabulary has been provided by
Lewis (1993, 1997) in his publications advocating the Lexical Approach. Some
authors even suggest that “[w]e teach grammar only to learners who have already
developed a substantial lexical base” (Ellis, 2002, p. 31). At the advanced level of
language proficiency, especially when English is used for academic purposes,
extensive knowledge of vocabulary is particularly important and lexical errors are
often rated as very serious by university teachers (Santos, 1988). At the same time,
however, expanding one’s lexicon at this level is not easy as what remains to be
learned are mostly low frequency words, collocations, idiomatic expressions and
lexical chunks (Marton, 1977). It is believed that incidental learning through exten-
sive reading and listening is the best way for advanced students of EFL to develop
their knowledge of lexis. However, in order to increase its effectiveness in moving the
new vocabulary items into productive use, some degree of explicit learning is also
recommended. One of such techniques is creating a database of vocabulary items
under study and using it to practice, revise and test these items. This can be done by the
students on their own as a form of self-assessment or by the teacher as part of
classroom testing. The procedure will be described in detail in Sect. 3 of this paper.
2 Vocabulary Learning and Teaching and Types

of Vocabulary Items
2.1 Defining Vocabulary
When discussing the process of vocabulary teaching and learning, it is necessary to

start with a presentation of some of the difficulties we encounter when trying to say
what is meant by vocabulary. Traditionally, vocabulary learning meant learning
words, but today we more often talk about learning vocabulary items. This is
partially caused by problems involved in trying to define what a word is. When
looking at written texts we can apply an orthographic definition of a word which
states that “a word is any sequence of letters (and a limited number of other
characteristics such as a hyphen and apostrophe) bounded on either side by a space
or punctuation mark” (Carter, 2012, p. 20). This definition, although practical and
appealing to our common-sense understanding of the term, is not without its lim-
itations. First of all, it cannot be used to define words in spoken language pro-
duction. To deal with this problem, Carter puts forward another definition stating
that a word “will not have more than one stressed syllable” (Carter, 2012, p. 22).
More importantly, however, the orthographic definition of a word does not allow us
to decide if in pairs such as foot/feet, or sleep/slept each item should be treated as a
different word. This definition is also not very helpful when dealing with polysemic
words, such as bank, issue or treat, as it does not specify if each of the different
meanings of such words should be counted separately. The matter is further
Student-Generated Vocabulary Tests as a Way of Fostering Autonomy 101
complicated by the existence of items such as the day after tomorrow, stock market
or idiomatic expressions such as kick the bucket. One of the ways of avoiding some
of the problems mentioned above is to use the term lexeme (or lexical unit or lexical
item) to refer to “an item that functions as a single meaning unit, regardless of the
number of words it contains” (Schmitt, 2000, p. 2). In more general discussion the
terms word or vocabulary are still used as “[i]t is clear that the uses of words word
or vocabulary have a general common-sense validity and are serviceable when
there is no real need to be precise” (Carter, 2012, p. 23).
Vocabulary items are often divided into two major categories: single words and
multiword units (MWUs). The first group includes “freestanding items of language
that have meaning” (McCarthy, 1990, p. 3) and can be further subdivided into basic
roots such as pen or ugly, derived words, such as disapprove or unbelievable and,
for some authors (McCarthy, 1990), compound words, such as coursebook or
lampshade. Multiword items have been categorized differently by different authors
but they usually include compound words, phrasal verbs, fixed phrases, idioms,
proverbs, and lexical phrases (Schmitt, 2000, p. 99).
2.2 How Many Words Do We Need to Know?
It is estimated that a five-year-old native speaker of English knows about 4000–

5000 word families and that every year around 1000 word families are added until
the size of an educated university graduate reaches 20,000 word families (Nation &
Waring, 1997, p. 7). The size of vocabulary a learner of English as a second
language should reach depends to a large extent on the goals set by this learner but
there seems to be a general agreement that knowing the most frequent 2000 words
is necessary for basic language use. For reading at the intermediate level the
knowledge of over 3000 is required (Schmitt, 2000, p. 150) and between 6000 and
9000 word families needed for full comprehension of most texts (Nation, 2013,
pp. 14–16).
2.3 Knowing a Word
Knowing a word involves knowing its form, meaning and use. When we know the
spoken form of a word we are able to recognize and understand it when we see it
printed and spell it correctly when we use it in writing. The knowledge of the
spoken form involves the ability to recognize the word when we hear it and to
pronounce it correctly, including appropriate word stress, when we speak. Some
researchers (e.g., Nation, 2001, 2013) include knowing the constituent parts of the
word under the heading of form. The second aspect of word knowledge is its
meaning, usually considered to be the most important and at the same time the most
complex part of knowing a word, as many words have more than one meaning and
often the boundaries between meanings of words in learners’ L1 do not correspond

to those in L2. The final aspect of knowing a word is the ability to use it, which
encomapsses the knowledge of grammar patterns the word can occur in, its col-
locations and restrictions on use (Nation, 2001, p. 27, 2013, pp. 82–84). When
learning new verbs, for example, we should find out if they are regular or irregular,
transitive or intransitive, followed by the infinitive, the -ing form, or a preposition.
Similarly, when learning nouns, we should also learn if they are countable or
uncountable or if their plural is regular or not (Gairns & Redman, 1986, p. 45).
Since words rarely appear in isolation, we should know what other words they
collocate with so that we know that we answer the phone, take pictures or carry out
experiments. Collocations are quite difficult to learn as they are fairly arbitrary and
differ from language to language. What makes learning them additionally difficult is
their lack of saliency as very often they are quite easy to understand. As a result,
learners do not notice them and in language production often follow the patterns of
their L1. Learners should also know when to use or not to use a given word
depending on its style (i.e., formal or informal) and register.
2.4 Receptive and Productive Vocabulary Knowledge
An important distinction that should be made when talking about vocabulary

learning, teaching and testing is that between productive and receptive knowledge
of words, sometimes referred to as active and passive, respectively. The receptive
knowledge involves being able to recognize and understand a word when we come
across it during listening or reading, while the productive one enables us to use
words in our speech and writing. Typically, receptive knowledge precedes pro-
ductive knowledge so we first learn to understand a word and only later do we learn
to use it. It is also assumed that we know more words receptively than productively,
although research in this area is rather limited and inconclusive. The review of some
studies in the field carried out by Melka (1997) indicates that the difference may in
fact be quite small with as much as 92 % of receptive vocabulary being available
for active use. Laufer (2005), on the other hand, claims that the relationship
between the two kinds of vocabulary knowledge depends on the proficiency level.
According to her research, as much as 35 % of receptive vocabulary is known
productively at the 2000 frequency level with the number dropping to 16 % at the
5000 level. In other studies surveyed by Schmitt (2010), the numbers given for
receptive vocabulary known productively fall within the 50–75 % range. Schmitt
(2010) sees the reasons for these discrepancies in research results in the differences
in the way that vocabulary knowledge is measured and in the ways the notions of
receptive and productive vocabulary are defined. Let us look at the second issue
first.
The terms receptive and productive are operationalized differently by different
researchers. For Melka (1997), the receptive and productive mastery of vocabulary
can be seen as a continuum, with items moving from the receptive end of the scale
towards the productive one as more knowledge about them is acquired. It is not
clear, however, where the threshold beyond which receptive knowledge turns into
productive one is (Read, 2000). According to Meara (1997), what differentiates
receptive and productive vocabulary is the way in which the items belonging to
each of the two categories are connected with other words. Productively known
items are linked to many other words and can thus be activated by these words.
Receptively known vocabulary is not connected to other items in the mental lexicon
and has to be activated by an external stimulus such as its written or spoken form.
The issue is further complicated by the fact that at any given time different
aspects of vocabulary knowledge can be known to a different degree and a learner’s
knowledge of these aspects may be at different points on the receptive/productive
scale. A student can, for example, know the written form of a word both receptively
and productive (i.e., he or she can both recognize the word in print and write it) and
at the same time know its spoken form only receptively (i.e., he or she is able to
recall and understand the word when hearing it but is not able to pronounce it yet).
According to Schmitt, (2010, p. 82) “[i]n general, one would expect that the
‘contextual’ word knowledge aspects, like collocation and register, are especially
likely to lag behind in reaching a productive state, as this type of knowledge
requires a great deal of exposure to acquire”. Both teachers and learners should thus
bear the distinction in question in mind when taking decisions about which words
and their aspects should be learned for productive and which for receptive purposes.
2.5 Selecting Vocabulary to Be Taught and Learned
Several criteria have to be taken into consideration when selecting vocabulary

content of a language course, including frequency and range, learnability, learners
needs and level, usefulness, expediency and cultural factors (Gairns & Redman,
1986, McCarthy, 1990, Ur, 2012). When deciding which vocabulary items to teach
and learn, using the four vocabulary levels of high-frequency, academic, technical
and low-frequency words is often recommended (Nation & Chung, 2009, p. 545).
High-frequency words comprise about 2000 most common word families identified
initially by Michael West and published in 1953 as A General Service List of
English Words. The major drawback of the list is the fact that it is quite old and
includes some words which are not used that frequently anymore while at the same
time it lacks many common contemporary words such as computer or website. The
list needs updating also because it was based on written texts and does not include
many words that are typical of spoken discourse. Many new lists of the most
frequent vocabulary items are nowadays easily available online with Oxford 3000
and English profile being just two examples (Ur, 2012, p. 65). Both teachers and
learners should make these high-frequency words their priority in the classroom,
especially at the beginning and intermediate level of language proficiency. Students
who plan to undertake academic courses in English should then turn their attention
to academic words, that is words commonly found in different texts dealing with a
variety of academic disciplines. A list of 570 such word families was compiled by
Coxhead (2000). The list is divided into 10 numbered sublists on the bases of the
frequency of use of the words. Sublist 1 includes the most frequent words (e.g.,
estimate, economy, concept, context and distribute) while sublist 10 includes those
which are the least frequent, such as adjacent, albeit, notwithstanding, ongoing or
integrity. Technical words, unlike academic words, are closely associated with one
specific discipline and the decision to learn these words will depend on students’
needs. Students of medicine will probably need to learn such words as hypodermic,
coronary or anesthetic, while students of music will find words like clef, interval or
vibrato more useful. Technical vocabulary is crucial for understanding specialized
texts as it constitutes 20–30 % of the running words of such texts (Nation & Meara,
2010, p. 37). Finally, low-frequency words are the words which do not fit into the
above categories. They are “so infrequent, have such a narrow range of occurrence
and make up such a large group that they do not deserve teaching time” (Nation &
Meara, 2010, p. 37). These words, however, “may need to be learned, so that
learners can reach the 98 % coverage of text required for unassisted language use”
(Nation & Chung, 2009, p. 548).
Schmitt and Schmitt (2014) propose a different division of vocabulary based on
frequency distinguishing between high frequency words (3000 most frequent word
families, including many items from the Academic Word List), mid-frequency
words (3000–9000) and low frequency word (beyond the 9000 frequency level).
2.6 Vocabulary Acquisition
Research on the process of vocabulary acquisition is still inconclusive. As Nation

(1995, p. 5) puts it,
(…) there isn’t an overall theory of how vocabulary is acquired. Our knowledge has mainly
been built up from fragmentary studies, and at the moment we have only the broadest idea
of how acquisition might occur. We certainly have no knowledge of the acquisition stages
that particular words might move through. Additionally, we don’t know how the learning of
some words affects how other words are learned. There are still whole areas which are
completely unknown.
Two main processes are involved in vocabulary acquisition: explicit/intentional

learning and incidental learning, and ideally both should be integrated into a
well-designed language course through a combination of activities. Nation and
Meara (2010, p. 38–41) suggest that these activities should fall into the following
four strands: learning from meaning-focused input and output, deliberate vocabu-
lary learning using techniques such as word cards and developing fluency through
activities integrating the four skills.
Hunt and Beglar (2002) formulated seven principles for involving incidental
learning, explicit instruction and independent strategy development. For incidental
learning to take place, learners must be provided with opportunities to be exposed
to new vocabulary through extensive listening and reading. Explicit instruction
should start with a needs analysis establishing which of the 3000 most frequent
words need to be taught. These words should then be made available for students
through presentation, elaborating word knowledge and activities aiming at fluency
development. Finally, strategy development should involve practicing guessing
from context and dictionary training. It is generally agreed that at the lower level of
language proficiency, when students are still acquiring the most frequent words,
explicit instruction is more efficient while incidental learning through extensive
reading and listening is considered to be more suitable for more advanced learners.
2.7 Testing Vocabulary
Nation and Meara (2010, p. 44) identify the following goals of vocabulary testing:
• to measure vocabulary size;
• to measure what has just been learned;
• to measure what has been learned in a course;
• to diagnose areas of strength and weaknesses.
Regardless of their aim, most vocabulary testing techniques measure the size of
students’ vocabulary—how many words from a frequency list or a coursebook unit
they know, thus concentrating on the breadth rather than depth of knowledge.
In The Vocabulary Levels Test (Schmitt, 2000, pp. 192–200), learners must
match words with their meanings. The test is divided into levels of difficulty. The
following examples are taken from the 2000-word level (A) and the 10,000-word
level (B) of the test:
A: 1. birth
2. dust … game
3. operation … winning
4. row … being born
5. sport
6. victory
B: 1. auspices
2. dregs … confused mixture
3. hostage … natural liquid present in the mouth
4. jumble … worst and most useless parts of anything
5. saliva
6. truce
The Vocabulary Size Test, devised by Nation and Beglar (2007) consists of 140
multiple choice items including samples from the list of 14,000 most frequent word
families, as in the example below (2007, p. 11):
1. Innocuous: This is innocuous
a. cheap and poor in quality
b. harmless
c. not believable
d. very attractive looking
The test measures receptive knowledge of vocabulary and is not indicative of the
takers’ ability to use the words productively while speaking and/or writing.
There are relatively few techniques which can be used to assess the depth of
knowledge. Two examples are provided below. The aim of the first technique is to
check if students know the meaning of the word and its collocations. The second
technique is based on the students’ ability to self-assess their knowledge and can be
used to raise awareness of the processes involved in vocabulary acquisition,
pointing to the degrees of word knowledge.
Example 1 Choose four words that go with the test word. Choose at least one from each of the two
boxes:sudden
beautiful quick surprising thirsty change doctor noise school
(Read, 1995, after Nation, 2001, pp. 344–345).
Example 2 Rate your knowledge of the target word. If you choose (d), please compose a sentence
using that word.
expand
a. I don’t know this word.
b. I have seen this word before but am not sure of the meaning.
c. I understand the word when I see or hear it in a sentence, but I don’t know how to use it
in my own speaking or writing.
d. I can use the word in a sentence.
(Scarcella & Zimmerman, 1996, after Schmitt, 2000, p. 170).
Other popular techniques more commonly used by language teachers to test

vocabulary include multiple-choice tests, filling in gaps, matching, translation,
cloze and selective/open cloze, C-tests, making up sentences with new words,
writing a story using selected words or describing pictures. Considering the com-
plexity of vocabulary knowledge, it is perhaps advisable that teachers should use a
variety of assessment techniques, thus making sure that the different aspects of
word knowledge are taken into account.
3 Advanced Students as Independent Vocabulary

Learners
The idea of autonomous, independent learning without institutional support is not

new but the term autonomy has been used with reference to language teaching for
only about 40 years while its history in the context of education in general is much
longer (Benson, 2011, pp. 9, 26–57). A variety of definitions of the notion of
autonomy can be found in the literature on the subject and different authors
emphasize different aspects of the concept. For the purposes of this paper, Benson’s
definition of autonomy as “the capacity to take control of one’s own learning”
(2011, p. 58) seems particularly suitable, as especially at the advanced level of
language proficiency vocabulary development requires active student involvement.
Nation (1998, p. 9, 2013, pp. 583–584) addresses the issue of autonomous
vocabulary learning with reference to three factors of attitude (i.e., willingness to
take responsibility for learning), awareness (i.e., ability to reflect on actions taken
and knowledge of other options available) and capability (i.e., having the necessary
skills to take control of the learning process). He further develops the notion of
capability by providing seven principles of vocabulary learning which can lead to
the development of autonomous learning of lexis. Four of these principles are
provided below (Nation, 1998, pp. 10–11, 2013, pp. 584–586):
1. Learners should know what vocabulary to learn, what to learn about it, how to learn it,
how to put it to use, and how to see how well it has been learned and used (…)
2. Learners should continue to increase their vocabulary size and enrich the words they
already know (…)
3. Learners should use word frequency and personal need to determine what vocabulary
should be learned (…)
4. Learners should be aware of what is involved in knowing a word and should be able to
find that information about particular words (…)
As has been said above, vocabulary development is a complex process and,

especially at the more advanced levels, requires systematic, intentional effort. In
order for this effort to be efficient, students should be familiar with vocabulary
learning strategies they can use to discover a word’s meaning and to consolidate the
knowledge of the word (Schmitt, 1997, pp. 207–208; Nation, 2013, pp. 326–345),
and encouraged to use them regularly. In their overview of recent research on
vocabulary learning strategies, Nyikos and Fan (2007) conclude that successful
language learners display an independent, active approach to vocabulary learning,
systematically practicing and reviewing words outside the classroom and that
“instruction in metacognitive self-regulatory strategies allows students to better
monitor their use of guessing, inferencing, repetition, and focused attention
strategies significantly improving general student performance and vocabulary
acquisition” (2007, p. 273).
4 Creating and Using a Vocabulary Database
4.1 From Teacher-Generated to Student-Generated Tests
The procedure for organizing and learning vocabulary described in the present
paper is an extension of a technique introduced as part of a listening/speaking
module of an EFL course for 1st and 3rd year students of a teacher training college
over the years 2008–2012. It was first used as a way of testing vocabulary covered
during the course with the teacher choosing the items to be included in the database
as well as their definitions and examples of use. However, the format of the
database allows for it to be used as a much more learner-centered instrument with
the students gradually selecting all of its contents. What is more, the database can
be used by individual students independently of classroom instruction as a way of
creating their own sets of vocabulary items they wish to learn.
4.1.1 Test Format
The format of the test used here is a variation of the gap-fill technique—the students
are provided with a gapped sentence and have to complete it with an appropriate
word. To make the task easier and to increase the possibility of a specific word
being used, a dictionary definition of the word is also provided. A typical test item
looks like in the example below:
The two athletes are ………… for the gold medal.
(to take part in an event or game)
The format elicits productive knowledge of the items tested, although not all
aspects of that knowledge need to be mastered to complete the test. In the example
provided above students do not have to have a full grasp of the grammar of the
word as the preposition it takes (for) is given. A similar technique of vocabulary
revision and testing is used in such programs as Anki and SuperMemo.
4.1.2 Teacher-Generated Tests
In a more teacher-centered approach, the database can be compiled by the teacher,

who selects vocabulary items from texts covered in class and chooses example
sentences and definitions from popular learner dictionaries. The database can then
be expanded as new material is introduced. The students should be made familiar
with the format before they take the test and the teacher can go through sample
items during class as a way of reviewing vocabulary. It is recommended that
students are told which dictionary or dictionaries the examples and definitions will
be taken from, as this may encourage them to use the dictionaries on their own. The
aims of introducing the procedure are manifold and include:
• encouraging students to study vocabulary in a systematic way;

• encouraging students to use good monolingual dictionaries, including the extra
examples they provide;
• raising the students’ awareness of the importance of the context in learning
vocabulary.
The major drawback of the above approach is the fact that it may turn out to be
quite difficult for the students, especially those unwilling to change their vocabulary
learning habits, as was the case when the test was first used with college students.
Many of them either did not make any vocabulary notes at all or only made lists of
new vocabulary items with their Polish equivalents. To make the task easier for the
students, the whole database can be made available to them before the test. This
approach, however, does not make it necessary for the students to use dictionaries
on their own as most of the work is done by the teacher. As a result, the second goal
of the procedure is not met.
4.1.3 Student-Generated Tests
In order to encourage students to take control of the learning process, the teacher
can ask them to compile the database on their own. In this way, the focus is shifted
from testing to learning and the students take on the responsibility for preparing the
materials. Successful implementation of the procedure described above requires
dealing with a variety of problems, such as assigning roles and responsibilities to
individual students and groups of students, meeting deadlines, making decisions
about item selection and evaluation of word definitions and example sentences
chosen by the students. An additional problem may arise when students do not have
sufficient computer skills to create, share, and manage the database. In this case,
however, the experience may have an extra advantage of encouraging them to work
not only on their vocabulary but also on their IT skills.
4.2 Description of the Database
The idea of involving students in generating vocabulary tests for themselves is

based on the assumption that if they are given a simple tool which will do most of
the hard work for them, they will be motivated to build a database of vocabulary
items and use it to produce practice materials and tests, and then work on the new
vocabulary using the materials they have produced. A database of vocabulary items
is understood here as a table (or a collection of tables) containing the studied
language material structured to facilitate actions such as updating, sharing, and
producing various documents with the use of mail merge. The tables with collected
vocabulary items with definitions and examples are used as data sources to create
tests, test keys, study slides, index cards and possibly other materials using mail
merge templates. A typical data table may have the following structure:
• vocabulary item;
• example sentence broken into three parts:
– Sent_left;
– Sent_middle (vocabulary item as used in the example sentence);
– Sent_end;
• definition;
• item number.
as shown in the following example:
Number Item Sent_left Sent_middle Sent_end Defi

036 compete The two competing for the gold to take part in an
athletes medal event or game
are
011 emit Sulphur emitted by the to send out a beam,
gases volcano noise, smell or gas
were
010 abandon The baby abandoned by its mother to leave a place,
had been thing or person
forever
037 chase She was chasing after a man to hurry after
who had someone or
snatched her something in order to
bag catch them
027 rank She is ranked player in the to have a particular
currently world position in a list of
the people or things
highest
The mail-merge facility available as standard in all the recent versions of Word for
Windows works with data tables stored as files in one of the following formats:
• Word .doc .docx file;
• Text .txt .csv file;
• Excel .xls .xlsx worksheet;
• Access table or query.
Another document that is essential in the mail-merge process is a mail-merge
template, which includes information on exactly where the data from the table are
inserted in the generated document, which text appears exactly as we typed it, what
attributes the text will have, what will be the layout of the paragraphs, which
paragraphs are to be numbered automatically, etc. The mail-merge template types

that are of interest here are the catalog and label. Figure 1 illustrates a template for
a test shown in its full format later on in this text. It is important to note that the
names of the placeholders correspond to the column labels in the data table and that
the only text that was actually typed by the person creating the template are the dots
in the gap (and the spaces) and the parentheses enclosing the Defi placeholder. The
number (including the dot and the bold attribute) is generated automatically. The
template, then, shows a pattern for one test item—the entire test is generated with
the data from the table on the basis of this one pattern. Figure 2 shows the template
filled with data from the table.
After creating a mail-merge template and specifying a data source for it, a target
document can be produced, which in most cases is a regular document which can be
saved, printed, edited further and so on. Usually, rather than editing the target
document, the template is re-edited and re-generated until it is acceptable. If nec-
essary, or otherwise desirable, the source data table may have more columns for
additional information on the item or the data associated with it, such as:
• Polish (native language) equivalent(s);
• source of item (unit, text, etc.);
• source of definition (dictionary);
• source of example (dictionary, text);
• comment(s);
• student specific data;
• technical and/or administrative data.
Fig. 1 Template with empty

placeholders
Fig. 2 Template with

placeholders filled with data
for the first item
4.3 Types of Materials Which Can Be Generated Using

the Database
Materials which can be generated automatically from the data tables include:
• test, produced as
– a document to be printed;
– Power Point slides;
– a web page;
• key;
• Power Point ‘learning mode’ slides;
• index cards.
4.3.1 Tests and Answer Keys
The most common format of the test which can be generated using the database is a
regular printed test accompanied by a printed key. In order to facilitate test relia-
bility, two or more versions of a printed test can be generated from the same data
table with different items or with the same items in a different order. An example
test fragment is shown below (all the examples and definitions come from Longman
Dictionary of Contemporary English).
1. The two athletes are ………… for the gold medal.
(to take part in an event or game)
2. Sulphur gases were ………… by the volcano.
(to send out a beam, noise, smell or gas)
3. The baby had been ………… by its mother.
(to leave a place, thing or person forever)
4. She was ………… after a man who had snatched her bag.
(to hurry after someone or something in order to catch them)
5. She is currently the highest ………… player in the world.
(to have a particular position in a list of people or things)
The two answer key formats which can be easily generated from the database can
take the forms illustrated in Figs. 3 and 4.
A test produced as a slide presentation features regular test items shown on a
separate slide each, with an appropriate number heading and possibly color or other
1. compete 2. emit 3. abandon

4. chase 5. rank
Fig. 3 Answer key format 1—words only

1. The two athletes are . . . . . . . competing. . . . .for the gold medal.
2. Sulphur gases were . . . . . . . emitted. . . . .by the volcano.
3. The baby had been . . . . . . . abandoned. . . . .by its mother.
4. She was . . . . . . . chasing. . . . .after a man who had snatched her bag.
5. She is currently the highest . . . . . . . ranked. . . . .player in the world.
Fig. 4 Answer key format 2—complete sentences with the words highlighted
text attributes to facilitate readability. A test like that to be used in the classroom
needs an answer sheet for the students to write on. Such an answer key may be
produced separately also using mail merge. A series of four example test slides are
shown in Fig. 5.
A ‘learning mode’ version of the slide test simply includes an additional
‘answer’ slide to follow each ‘test’ slide as shown in the example below for two
vocabulary items. This version of the test can be used to practice vocabulary in
class or individually by the students outside the classroom (see Fig. 6).
To facilitate quick transfer of a test generated as a Word document to Power
Point:
• apply the style Heading 1 to the number heading (Question 1);
• insert the number of merged record as a field;
• apply the style Heading 2 to the question;
• apply the style Heading 3 to the definition;
• transfer the document directly to Power Point by going to File—Send to—
Power Point.
Fig. 5 Examples of test slides

Fig. 6 Examples of “learning mode” slides
Fig. 7 A screenshot of a website
Students with some knowledge of html (the mark-up language used to format
web pages) should be able to produce simple web pages including example sen-
tences and the definitions showing in pop-up boxes when the mouse hovers over the
definition as shown in the screen shot in Fig. 7.
This idea could be developed further if simple interactive features of web pages
(html and java script) are taken advantage of as shown in the two example
screenshots in Figs. 8 and 9.
The page is static and the ‘interactive’ element of the page is simply manipu-
lation of font and background color. When the learner points to a dotted box with
the mouse pointer to ‘check the answer’, the hidden word is shown red (the word
ranked above). When the mouse pointer is moved away, the word disappears again
(as in the second line above). The learner can ‘freeze’ the items she or he got wrong
Fig. 8 Initial state of the page. The definitions show in pop-ups as before
Fig. 9 The learner looks at the examples and possibly checks the definition, tries to guess the
word and checks the answer by pointing at the gap in the sentence
(or right) on the screen by clicking on the dotted box. Then the word appears white
against a dark background (as shown for the words competing, abandoned and
chasing above) and stays highlighted until the page is refreshed, at which point the
learner may want to review the entire set or part of it at his or her individual pace.
The template for the web page version as described above is given in Fig. 10.
A document generated using this or a similar, possibly more elaborate, template
needs to be saved as text with an .htm or .html extension (and possibly with a
proper web page header) and opened using a web browser. No Internet access is
necessary. The Internet, however, could be a natural environment for materials
created this way, especially if they are meant to be made available to users of
mobile media.
«Sent_left»__
 «Sent_middle» __
«Sent_end» definition
Fig. 10 The template for the website
4.3.2 Index Cards
The same database can be used to prepare additional practice materials in the form
of index cards, which are similar in format to envelope labels or conference name
tags and can be generated using one of the standards label formats available in MS
Office Word. Index cards may be one- or two-sided and—like tests—can include
• vocabulary items only;
• full sentences with vocabulary items highlighted;
• definitions;
• L1 equivalents;
• some or all of the above.
The index cards shown in Fig. 11 are a simple version featuring the vocabulary
item and the dictionary definition.
All the materials presented above can be generated very quickly and easily once
the database is started. The more items are added, the more challenging and
interesting the learning and testing process becomes. If students are allowed to
decide which items to include in the database, they are likely to feel empowered and
in control of their learning.
Summing up, the database instrument for vocabulary learning presented above
can be seen as a way of promoting autonomy through allowing students to take
control of the process learning vocabulary by enabling them to:
• choose vocabulary items they want to learn;
• add definitions of the items they selected from a dictionary of their choice;
• find examples of sentences illustrating the use of the items they want to study
using a variety of resources available (dictionaries, corpora, authentic materials);
• add more examples of their choice as they come across the new vocabulary
items in the linguistic input they are exposed to (both written and spoken);
• add any information about the word they find interesting and/or useful;
• generate a variety of ways of revising vocabulary under study (tests, Power
Point ‘learning mode’ slides, a semi-interactive mode web-page, index cards).
commitment
when you are willing to oppression congestion
give your time and energy when people are too much traffic and
to something that you governed in an unfair and movement is made
believe in cruel way difficult
chase
emit abandon
to hurry after someone
to send out a beam, to leave a place, thing
or something in order to
noise, smell or gas or person forever
catch them
Fig. 11 Examples of index cards
5 Conclusions
Vocabulary learning is a complex, time-consuming and never ending part of the

process of second language acquisition. Knowing a word involves a variety of
aspects which cannot be mastered after a single encounter with the word and often
even extensive exposure to language input through reading and listening is not
enough, and should be supported by explicit, intentional study of vocabulary. The
instrument described in the present paper offers students a way of gathering
information on vocabulary items introduced in the language course they take and
revising them in a variety of ways. It can also be used by teachers to generate tests
with the extra advantage of students being aware of what to expect and how to
prepare for tests. Needless to say, the test format described here should be treated as
just one of the many options available to students and teachers and should be
supplemented by a variety of learning and testing techniques to make the process of
vocabulary acquisition as effective as possible.
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Part II
Language Learning Strategies
Exploring the Relationship Between
Intelligence and the Use of Language
Learning Strategies
Larysa Grzegorzewska
Abstract The topic area of the present paper covers such issues as intelligence,
language learning strategies (LLSs), and the relationship between intelligence
scores and the use of LLSs. Individual differences affect the outcome of the process
of learning a foreign language. Intelligence and LLSs are powerful factors which
account for the variation in the process of language learning. In the first part of the
paper, a brief overview of the notions of intelligence and LLSs is presented. In the
second part, the author presents the results of a study conducted among 32
upper-intermediate students during their first year of study in different departments
of Pope John Paul II State School of Higher Education in Biała Podlaska, Poland.
The study examined how students with different IQ scores employ Oxford’s (1990)
six groups of memory, cognitive, compensation, metacognitive, social, and affec-
tive strategies, inside and outside the classroom. To measure a general intelligence
factor, Raven’s progressive matrices were used. The main tool applied to investi-
gate strategy use was the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL)
developed by Oxford (1990) on the basis of her classification of strategies.
One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to analyze the collected data and
differences were found in strategy use between the groups of participants with
different intelligence levels.
1 Introduction
Individual differences have been a topic of interest to many researchers for quite
some time now. They have a great impact on the process of language learning and
its outcome. Although the rate of second and foreign language acquisition and final
attainment are greatly influenced by individual variables of the learners, it is the
L. Grzegorzewska (&)
University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
e-mail: larissa2@tlen.pl

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-07764-2_8
122 L. Grzegorzewska
interaction of individual factors that ultimately accounts for learning outcomes.

Dörnyei (2009) argues that the acquisition of a first language, however, shows a
remarkable homogeneity. Almost everybody masters their mother tongue at a
native-like level. Shore (1995) qualifies this homogeneity claiming that “children
can take alternate routes” (p. 1) in language development or “there may be more
than one pathway, perhaps several pathways, that children follow into language”
(p. 5), and only the final outcome appears to be relatively consistent. According to
Dörnyei (2009, p. 181), “individual differences (IDs) are characteristics or traits in
respect of which individuals may be shown to differ from each other (…) in order to
avoid too large a list of variables that would qualify as IDs we need to set some
further restrictions. Therefore, all scientific definitions of IDs assume the relevance
of stability”. The five individual variables traditionally regarded as the most
important in second language acquisition are motivation, language aptitude,
learning/cognitive styles, learning strategies, and anxiety (Dörnyei, 2005, 2006).
According to Dörnyei (2009, p. 184), there are “at least three other personality
facets—emotions, interests, and general knowledge—that would arguably qualify
for being ID factors more than some of the traditional categories”. Intelligence is a
powerful factor associated with CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency;
Cummins, 1981). Cummins (2000) argues that academic language is connected
with higher-order thinking, including hypothesizing, evaluating, inferring, gener-
alizing, predicting, and classifying. Sasaki (1993) points out that 42 % of general
second language proficiency can be explained by general cognitive ability, or
‘general intelligence’. In the present study an attempt is made to investigate the
relationship between intelligence and the frequency of the use of the six categories
of Oxford’s (1990) language learning strategies (LLSs).
2 Intelligence: Definitions and Theories
Intelligence is an important variable in the description of individual variation. There

are a lot of definitions of intelligence, which shows that it is a complex issue
demanding further research. Some researchers (e.g., Berry, 1984; Sternberg, 2001)
claim that the definition of intelligence depends on where in the world we are.
According to Spearman (1927), intelligence is a kind of mental energy, and indi-
viduals differ in the amount of mental energy at their disposal. Ceci (2001, p. 46)
describes intelligence as “the ability for complex thinking and reasoning”. Nęcka
(2003) argues that intelligence consists of basic cognitive processes such as
attention, operational memory, and cognitive control. Sternberg and Detterman
(1986) asked 24 experts to define intelligence. The answers differed a lot, including
references to adaptability to new problems in life, ability in abstract thinking,
adjustment to the environment and capacity for knowledge, independence and
originality. However, certain themes were common and consensus emerged
between experts. Intelligence includes such qualities as adaptation to the
Exploring the Relationship Between Intelligence and the Use … 123
environment, basic mental processes and aspects of higher-order thinking, such as

reasoning, problem solving and decision making (Maltby, Day, & Macaskill, 2010).
There is no agreement among specialists with respect to what constitutes
intelligence. While some researchers claim that it is a general ability, others suggest
that intelligence consists of a range of abilities. Spearman (1904, 1927) formulated
one of the most important theories in psychology, the theory of general intelligence,
or g. He found positive correlations between different intelligence tests, which
meant that “a person who does well on one intelligence test will perform equally
well on a variety of intellectual tests, be they tests concerned with vocabulary,
mathematical or spatial abilities” (Maltby et al., 2010, p. 286). Spearman developed
the idea of a two-factor theory of intelligence. The first factor, s (specific abilities),
is the type of intelligence which is related to unique abilities required to perform
well on a particular test. The second factor, g (general intelligence), is the type of
intelligence that underlies all mental abilities and is needed to perform well on all
types of intelligence tests. Spearman’s theory has been further elaborated on by
many researchers, resulting in the development of different hierarchical models of
intelligence (e.g., Cattell, 1971; Guilford, 1977; Thurstone & Thurstone, 1941). All
of these models acknowledge the existence of general intelligence which is fun-
damental to performing different intellectual tasks. The difference between these
models lies in the number and the arrangement of their components (Nęcka, 2003).
Gardner and Sternberg are the best-known representatives of the latest trends in
intelligence theory. Recognizing problems with single/general-ability theories,
Gardner (1983, 1993) suggested a model of multiple intelligences. Initially, the
model consisted of seven, and now eight multiple intelligences: linguistic,
logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intraper-
sonal, and now naturalistic. Gardner also suggested that there may be existential
and spiritual intelligences, which he calls candidate intelligences. Sternberg (1988,
2002) developed a triarchic theory of intelligence, which comprises three different
aspects of intelligence, that is analytical (componential), creative (experiential), and
practical (contextual). The intelligence which is needed to achieve success in life
and in learning a foreign language comprises analytical, creative, and practical
aspects as well. Sternberg’s triarchic theory is an attempt to synthesize the various
theories of intelligence. For the purpose of the present study, Spearman’s theory has
been adopted as a theoretical base, which allows to accept Gottfredson’s (1997,
p. 13) definition of intelligence as “a very general mental capability that, among
other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly,
comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience”.
3 Research into Language Learning Strategies
Learning strategies are defined by Oxford (1999, p. 518) as “specific actions,

behaviors, steps, or techniques that students use to improve their own progress in
developing skills in a second or foreign language. These strategies can facilitate the
internalization, storage, retrieval, or use of the new language”. According to

O’Malley and Chamot (1990, p. 1), LLSs involve “special thoughts or behaviors
that individuals use to help them comprehend, learn, or retain new information”,
with this definition emphasizing the cognitive aspect of strategy use. According to
Cohen (1998), an important fact about learning strategies is that they are used
voluntarily, and that is why he emphasizes another important aspect of LLSs, the
element of choice.
The two best-known taxonomies of LLSs were developed by Oxford (1990) and
by O’Malley and Chamot (1990). Oxford’s taxonomy consists of six classes:
cognitive, memory, metacognitive (direct strategies); and compensation, affective,
and social strategies (indirect strategies). O’Malley and Chamot’s (1990) taxonomy
consists of three main groups of strategies: cognitive, metacognitive, and
social/affective strategies. Since the strategy systems proposed by Oxford (1990)
and O’Malley and Chamot (1990) are highly compatible, it has been suggested
(Dörnyei, 2005) that they should be combined. The resulting typology comprises
the following main categories: cognitive, metacognitive, social, and affective
strategies.
More recently, Oxford (2011) proposed a new taxonomy of strategies for lan-
guage learning. The S2R model (strategic self-regulation model) includes three
types of strategies: cognitive, affective, and sociocultural-interactive (SI). These
types of strategies represent three major mutually influential dimensions of L2
learning. Instead of metacognitive strategies, the best known type of metastrategies,
described in prior taxonomies by O’Malley and Chamot (1990) and Oxford (1990,
2011) introduces three types of metastrategies: metacognitive strategies, which are
responsible for cognitive strategy use; metaaffective strategies, which help the
learner control affective strategy use; and meta-SI strategies, which facilitate learner
control of the use of SI strategies. According to Oxford (2011, p. 17), “the concept
of metastrategies—more than just that of metacognitive strategies alone—reflects
the multidimensional reality of the L2 learner”.
Despite the fact that research into LLSs has been quite extensive and exhaustive
since early studies on good language learners, resulting in numerous taxonomies
and definitions which emphasize different aspects of strategies, some problems and
challenges should be mentioned here. First of all, there are still unresolved theo-
retical issues as to distinctive features of strategies, or even the definition of
strategies, which results in the criticism of the field of L2 learning strategies by
many researchers. Dörnyei and Skehan (2003) reveal the weaknesses of the concept
asking: “How can something be either cognition or affect or behavior?” (p. 610).
Dörnyei (2005) goes even further asking if learning strategies actually exist. For
him, the most fundamental issue which is still left open is “the difference between
engaging in an ordinary learning activity and a strategic learning activity” (p. 164).
Emphasizing the conceptual and measurement problems of L2 strategy research, he
claims that “in the absence of a tight definition, it is unclear what different
researchers mean by the term language learning strategy and the actual LLS
measures presented in various studies tend not to have sufficient psychometric
properties” (p. 188), which makes him argue that the concept should be abandoned
and replaced by the notion of self-regulation.
Research into individual differences affecting the use of LLSs has been very
extensive and it represents most fruitful part of the research into LLSs. One
rationale behind this research is “that strategy instruction should be geared to
learners’ individual and situational or group needs. Hence, there is a justification for
studying the effects of individual, group, and situational variables on strategy use”
(Takeuchi, Griffiths, & Coyle, 2007, p. 70). However, the relationship between
intelligence and LLSs has been explored in just a handful of empirical investiga-
tions. For instance, Akbari and Hosseini (2008) explored the relationship between
multiple intelligences and LLSs and found a low correlation between them, which
corresponds with the results of the study by Hajhashemi, Ghombavani and
Amirkhiz (2011), where a low positive correlation between multiple intelligences
and LLS was found, and where the highest correlation was observed between
metacognitive strategies and multiple intelligences, followed by compensation and
cognitive strategies. There is a line of inquiry into the relationship between emo-
tional intelligence and LLSs that is worth mentioning here. Aghasafari (as cited in
Zafari & Biria, 2014) found a significant relationship between emotional intelli-
gence and LLSs, which was supported by the studies by Hasanzadeh and
Shahmohamadi (2011) and Zafori and Biria (2014), who found a significant cor-
relation between emotional intelligence and LLSs. What is more, Rastegar and
Karami (2013) found a significant positive relationship between emotional intelli-
gence and affective as well as social strategy use.
4 The Study
The primary aim of the research was to identify categories of LLSs and frequencies
of their use by adult upper-intermediate learners with different intelligence levels, as
well as to explore the relationship between intelligence and preferences for LLS
use. In other words, the research investigated the patterns (categories and fre-
quencies) of Oxford’s LLS use (memory, cognitive, compensation, metacognitive,
social, and affective), employed by learners with different intelligence levels. The
following are the research questions (RQs) in the study:
1. Is there a relationship between intelligence and the patterns of use of Oxford’s
(1990) memory, cognitive, compensation, metacognitive, social and affective
strategies by upper-intermediate learners?
2. If there is a relationship between intelligence and the patterns of use of memory,
cognitive, compensation, metacognitive, social and affective strategies, which
intelligence group is characterized by the most frequent strategy use, and which
one by the least frequent?
3. If there is a relationship between intelligence and the patterns of use of memory,

cognitive, compensation, metacognitive, social and affective strategies, which
strategies are preferred by learners with higher intelligence scores, and which
ones are employed by learners with lower intelligence scores?
4.1 Participants
The research involved 32 upper-intermediate learners of English completing their

first year of study in different departments (computer studies, national security,
marketing) of Pope John Paul II State School of Higher Education in Biała
Podlaska, Poland. The group consisted of 29 males and 3 females. Most of them
(30) were Polish, one student was Ukrainian, and one Lithuanian. On average, the
subjects reported having studied English for 10 years.
4.2 Methodology and Tools of Data Collection
To measure the general intelligence factor, Raven’s progressive matrices were used.
Their rationale is based on Spearman’s theory, and they “were designed to mini-
mize the influence of culture and language by relying on non-verbal problems that
require abstract reasoning and do not require knowledge of a particular culture”
(Maltby et al., 2010, p. 292). It should be mentioned here that Raven’s progressive
matrices were administered and interpreted by a professional psychologist.
The main tool applied to investigate the strategy use was the Strategy Inventory
for Language Learning (SILL), developed by Oxford (1990) on the basis of her
classification of strategic devices. It is a 5-point Likert scale, where the answers
range from 1 (never or almost never true of me) to 5 (always or almost always true
of me). The SILL consists of six groups of strategies:
(a) Remembering more effectively (memory strategies).
(b) Using your mental processes (cognitive strategies).
(c) Compensating for missing knowledge (compensation strategies).
(d) Organizing and evaluating your learning (metacognitive strategies).
(e) Managing your emotions (affective strategies).
(f) Learning with others (social strategies).
The results of the study were obtained using data analysis carried out with the
use of Statistica software. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to
determine statistically significant differences between the groups. In order to
uncover where differences occurred between the groups of students with different
intelligence levels, the post hoc LSD test was applied. The differences were
determined as statistically significant at p < 0.05.
4.3 Results
4.3.1 The Raven’s Progressive Matrices Results
As shown in Table 1, the analysis of Raven’s progressive matrices revealed that 10

subjects had average IQs, 8 participants had IQ scores above the average, 5 students
had high IQ scores, and 9 subjects were characterized by a very high intelligence
level.
4.3.2 The SILL Survey Results
As presented in Table 2, the overall average strategy use score among the partic-
ipants stood at 2.96, placing the subjects in the group of medium frequency strategy
users (cf. Oxford, 1990). The study revealed that the subjects used Group C
(compensating for missing knowledge) strategies the most frequently. The score of
3.56 means that strategies of this type were usually used and represented a high
range of strategy use. The second most frequent type of strategies was Group B
(using all your mental processes), with a score of 3.24, which placed this group
within the range of medium frequency (sometimes used). Group D (organizing and
evaluating your learning), Group F (learning with others), and Group A (remem-
bering more effectively) were also strategies used with medium frequency (some-
times used), with the scores of 3.08, 2.94, and 2.67, respectively. The least
frequently used category was Group E (managing your emotions). The score of
2.35 placed this group within the low frequency range and meant that these
strategies were used relatively infrequently.
Table 1 Results of the Raven’s progressive matrices in the group of upper-intermediate students
Intelligence level Number of students
Average 10
Above average 8
High 5
Very high 9
Table 2 Average use of Oxford’s (1990) strategy groups reported by the participants
Group A Group B Group C Group D Group E Group Average
(memory) (cognitive) (compensation) (metacognitive) (affective) F strategy
(social) use
2.67 3.24 3.56 3.08 2.35 2.94 2.96
The patterns of strategy employment by individual language learners were as

follows: (1) 2 subjects out of 32 were high frequency strategy users with the scores
of 3.8 and 3.7, and (2) 30 students were medium frequency strategy users.
4.3.3 Intelligence and the Use of LLSs
The subjects were divided into four groups according to their intelligence level and
the frequencies of use of Oxford’s six strategy groups were examined, with the
results shown in Table 3. The patterns of strategy use in the four subgroups
revealed that the subjects with an average intelligence level were the most frequent
strategy users, with an average score of 3.17. The strategies employed the most
often by this group were compensation (Group C) strategies (3.77). The strategies
employed the least often by this group were social (Group F) ones, with an average
mean of 2.22.
The least frequent strategy users turned out to be the subjects with a very high
intelligence level, with an average score of 2.86. This group of students utilized
compensation (Group C) strategies the most often and affective (Group E) strategies
the least often, with means of 3.40 and 2.20, respectively. It should be noted that the
frequency of strategy use decreased with an increase in intelligence level. The
analysis of the average use of Oxford’s six groups of learning strategies indicated
that Group A (memory) strategies were employed the most often by the subgroup
with average IQ scores, and they were used the least frequently by the subgroup
with high IQ scores. Cognitive (Group B) strategies were resorted to the most often
by the subgroup with an average intelligence level, whereas the strategies in this
category were used the least often by the subgroup with very high IQ scores. The
same pattern can be observed in the group of compensation (Group C) strategies,
with the mean of 3.77 for the subgroup of subjects with average intelligence scores
and the mean of 3.4 for the subgroup with a very high intelligence level. Group D
(metacognitive strategies) revealed the same pattern as Group A (memory). The
most frequent users of these strategies were the subjects with average intelligence
scores, and the least frequent the subjects with very high intelligence scores.
Group E (affective) strategies were utilized the most often by the subgroup with an
average intelligence score, while the other subgroups used these strategies with the
same, lower frequency. Group F (social strategies), however, displayed a different
pattern, with the group of students with a high intelligence level being the most
frequent users, and the participants with an average IQ being the least frequent users
of these strategies.
The analysis of intelligence-related individual learner strategy use, the data for
which is included in Table 4, revealed that Student 1, with the lowest IQ score
(bottom borderline of an average intelligence level), was the most frequent strategy
user. His average mean for strategy use amounted to 3.8, placing him within the
group of high strategy users. The subject relied on compensation (Group C)
strategies the most often (the mean frequency stood at 4.2). The other categories of
strategies, arranged according to the frequency of their use, were: social (Group F),
Table 3 Intelligence-related average use of Oxford’s (1990) six groups of learning strategies
Intelligence level No. Group A Group B Group C Group D Group E Group F Average strategy use
(memory) (cognitive) (compensation) (metacognitive) (affective) (social)
Average 10 2.82 3.37 3.77 3.15 2.46 2.22 3.17
Above average 8 2.70 3.20 3.50 3.10 2.20 3.00 3.00
High 5 2.56 3.18 3.68 2.78 2.20 3.22 2.94
Very high 9 2.58 2.96 3.40 2.85 2.20 2.58 2.86
Exploring the Relationship Between Intelligence and the Use …
129
Table 4 Intelligence-related individual learner strategy use
130
Student Intelligence level Group A Group B Group C Group D Group E Group F Average strategy use
1 Average 3.7 4.0 4.2 3.9 2.6 4.1 3.8
2 Above average 2.9 4.0 3.8 4.3 2.3 4.5 3.7
3 Average 3.2 3.6 4.1 3.7 2.0 3.1 3.4
4 Above average 3.4 3.5 4.0 3.4 2.5 3.2 3.4
5 High 2.9 3.6 3.2 4.0 2.2 4.5 3.4
6 Average 2.5 3.6 3.8 3.2 2.8 3.5 3.3
7 Average 3.3 3.6 4.3 3.7 1.9 2.8 3.3
8 Very high 2.6 3.9 3.8 3.4 1.7 3.8 3.3
9 Average 2.5 3.8 4.0 2.8 2.7 3.0 3.2
10 Above average 2.4 3.4 3.6 3.2 3.1 3.3 3.2
11 Very high 3.2 3.3 2.1 3.6 2.1 3.6 3.2
12 Average 2.7 3.5 3.2 3.0 2.2 3.8 3.1
13 Above average 3.2 3.1 3.7 3.2 2.8 2.5 3.1
14 High 2.6 3.2 3.3 3.3 3.0 3.2 3.1
15 Very high 2.8 3.4 4.2 3.0 2.8 2.2 3.1
16 Average 3.1 2.9 3.6 3.4 2.2 2.3 3.0
17 Average 2.2 2.9 3.7 2.4 2.7 4.1 3.0
18 Average 2.6 3.1 3.5 2.8 2.5 3.0 2.9
19 High 1.8 3.3 4.7 2.5 2.0 3.4 2.9
20 Very high 2.6 3.3 4.0 2.3 2.5 2.8 2.9
21 Very high 2.1 2.9 3.8 2.9 2.8 3.0 2.9
22 Very high 3.0 3.3 3.0 3.2 2.0 2.3 2.8
23 High 2.7 2.9 3.6 2.4 2.7 2.5 2.8
(continued)
L. Grzegorzewska
Table 4 (continued)
Student Intelligence level Group A Group B Group C Group D Group E Group F Average strategy use
24 Average 2.4 2.7 3.3 2.6 2.8 2.5 2.7
25 Above average 1.9 2.9 3.3 2.9 2.2 2.8 2.7
26 Above average 2.8 2.6 3.1 3.0 1.7 2.8 2.7
27 Above average 2.5 3.2 3.0 2.9 2.8 2.2 2.6
28 Above average 2.3 3.4 3.3 2.2 1.3 2.3 2.6
29 Very high 1.8 2.7 3.8 3.6 1.7 1.5 2.6
30 High 2.8 2.9 3.2 1.7 1.2 2.5 2.5
31 Very high 2.5 2.7 3 2.3 3.2 1.6 2.5
32 Very high 2.7 2.6 3 2.9 2.2 1.5 2.5
Exploring the Relationship Between Intelligence and the Use …
131
cognitive (Group B), metacognitive (Group D), and memory (Group A) strategies,
with the means of 4.1, 4.0, 3.9 and 3.7, respectively. The strategies employed by
this subject the least often were affective ones (Group E), with the mean of 2.6. It
must be noted that the most frequent strategy user activated five out of six strategy
groups relatively frequently. The least frequent strategy users in this study turned
out to be three students with high (Student 30) and very high (Student 31 and
Student 32) IQ scores. Their mean frequency of strategy use was 2.5, which placed
them within the group of medium strategy users. Student 32 resorted to compen-
sation (Group C) strategies the most often, followed by metacognitive (Group D)
strategies (the mean of 2.9) and memory (Group A) strategies (the mean of 2.7).
Student 31 activated affective (Group E) strategies the most frequently, with the
mean of 3.2, followed by compensation (Group C) and cognitive (Group B)
strategies, with average frequencies of 3.0 and 2.7, respectively. Among the
strategies employed by Student 30 compensation (Group C) strategies were acti-
vated the most often (3.2), followed by cognitive (2.9) and memory strategies (2.8).
4.3.4 Memory Strategies
This and the subsequent sections focus on the particular strategies for which sig-
nificant differences between intelligence groups were observed. As shown in
Table 5, the analysis of memory (Group A) strategies employed by the four sub-
groups of subjects with different IQ scores revealed that a significant difference
(p = 0.041) was observed in the frequency of use of the fourth memory strategy (“I
remember a new English word by making a mental picture of a situation in which
the word might be used”). This strategy was employed the most frequently by the
subgroup of subjects with average IQ scores (M = 3.60) and the least frequently by
the subjects with very high IQ scores (M = 2.55). It must be emphasized that the
scores increased with the decrease in the intelligence level.
Table 5 ANOVA of intelligence-related average use of Oxford’s (1990) memory strategies

Group A Intelligence level (M) F p
(memory) Very high High Above average Average
SILL items
4 2.55 (A)** 3.00 3.28 3.60 (V)** 2.913 0.041*
5 1.55 (H)** 2.80 (V, AA, A)** 1.42 (H)** 1.90 (H)** 3.368 0.024*
7 1.77 (AA)** 2.20 2.57 (V)** 2.40 2.822 0.049*
Notes *p < 0.05
**In brackets the group(s) whose mean(s) were revealed by post hoc tests to be significantly different
from the mean of a given group are listed
V Very high; H High; AA Above average; A Average
The use of the fifth memory strategy (p = 0.024; “I use rhymes to remember new
English words”) showed the following pattern: The highest mean was observed in
the subgroup of the subjects with a high intelligence level (M = 2.80), which was
significantly higher than in the other groups, with M = 1.9 for the subgroup with an
average intelligence level, M = 1.55 for the subgroup with a very high intelligence
level, and M = 1.42 for the subgroup with an above average intelligence level. The
seventh strategy in this category (p = 0.049; “I physically act out new English
words”) was utilized the most frequently by the students with an above average
intelligence level (M = 2.57) and the least often by the students with a very high
intelligence level (M = 1.77).
4.3.5 Cognitive Strategies
As shown in Table 6, a significant difference was revealed for eight out of 13

cognitive strategies. The analysis of the 10th strategy (“I say or write new English
words several times”; p = 0.006) indicated the highest value (M = 4.30) in the
group with an average intelligence level. The other groups employed this strategy
much less frequently: M = 3.55 for the subgroup with a very high, 3.42 for the
subgroup with an above average, and 2.80 for the subgroup with a high intelligence
level. The 11th strategy (“I try to talk like native English speakers”; p = 0.011) was
implemented the most often by the subgroup with an average intelligence level
(M = 4.40). The other groups of students had the following values: above average,
M = 4.00; high, M = 3.40; and a very high intelligence level, M = 3.33. It must be
noted that the frequency of use of this strategy decreased with an increase in
intelligence level. Students with average IQ scores employed the 12th strategy (“I
practice the sounds of English”; p = 0.049) with the highest frequency (M = 3.60),
followed by students with high (M = 3.20), above average (M = 3.00), and very
high (M = 2.77) IQs. Students with very high IQ scores, however, used the 16th
strategy (“I read for pleasure in English”) more often than the other groups with
M = 3.11, compared to M = 2.60 in the group with a high, M = 2.50 in the group
with an average, and M = 2.14 in the group with an above average intelligence
level.
The 17th strategy (“I write notes, messages, letters, or reports, in English”;
p = 0.001) was used the most often by the students with an average intelligence
level (M = 3.60). The subgroups with above average (M = 3.28), very high
(M = 2.66), and high intelligence levels (M = 2.00) used the strategy with
decreasing frequency. The 20th strategy (“I try to find patterns in English”;
p = 0.001), however, was used by the subjects with average IQ scores the least
often (M = 2.20). The subgroup with a very high intelligence level (M = 2.33)
manifested a similar value. The subgroups with high and above average intelligence
levels displayed the means of 3.40 and 3.42, respectively. The last (23rd) strategy in
this category (“I make summaries of information that I hear or read in English”;
p = 0.001) was resorted to by the subgroup with average and high intelligence
134
Table 6 ANOVA of intelligence-related average use of Oxford’s (1990) cognitive strategies

Group B Intelligence level (M) F p
(cognitive) SILL items Very high High Above average Average
10 3.55 (A)** 2.80 (A)** 3.42 (A)** 4.30 (V, H, AA)** 4.584 0.006*
11 3.33 (A)** 3.40 (A)** 4.00 4.40 (V, H)** 4.034 0.011*
12 2.77 (A)** 3.20 (V)** 3.00 3.60 (V)** 2.829 0.049*
13 3.00 (H)** 4.00 (V)** 3.57 3.40 2.904 0.047*
16 3.11 (A)** 2.60 2.14 (V)** 2.50 2.953 0.045*
17 2.66 (A)** 2.00 (AA, A)** 3.28 (H)** 3.60 (V, H)** 6.178 0.001*
20 2.33 (H, AA)** 3.40 (V, A)** 3.42 (V, A)** 2.20 (H, AA)** 8.477 0.001*
23 2.22 (H, A)** 3.20 (V)** 2.71 3.20 (V)** 6.066 0.001*
Note *p < 0.05
**In brackets the group(s) whose mean(s) were revealed by post hoc tests to be significantly different from the mean of a given group are listed
L. Grzegorzewska
levels with the same frequency (M = 3.20). Next in line were the subgroups with
above average (M = 2.71) and very high (M = 2.22) IQ scores.
4.3.6 Compensation Strategies
As Table 7 demonstrates, the 24th strategy (“To understand unfamiliar English

words, I make guesses”; p = 0.001) was used the most often by the students with an
average intelligence level (M = 4.20). The subgroup with high IQ scores employed
this strategy with a mean frequency of 4.00, the subgroup with an above average
intelligence level declared that they applied this strategy with a mean frequency of
3.42, and the group with very high IQ scores used it the least frequently
(M = 2.55). The 28th strategy (“I try to guess what the other person will say next in
English”; p = 0.050) was the most popular among the subjects with an average
intelligence level (M = 4.10). Next in line were the subgroup with very high
(M = 3.88), above average (M = 3.42), and high (M = 3.20) IQ scores.
4.3.7 Metacognitive Strategies
As shown in Table 8, the 31st strategy (“I notice my English mistakes and use that
information to help me do better”; p = 0.048) was employed the most often by the
subjects with an above average intelligence level (M = 3.71). The other groups—
average (M = 3.30), high (M = 3.20), and very high IQ scores (M = 2.77)—used
this strategy with decreasing frequency. The 32nd strategy (“I pay attention when
someone is speaking English”; p = 0.001) was the most eagerly employed by the
students with a very high intelligence level (M = 4.55). The next position was
occupied by the subgroup with above average IQ scores (M = 4.42). Almost the
same mean was obtained by the subgroup with an average intelligence level
(M = 4.40), and the group with high IQ scores had a mean of 3.20. The 36th
strategy (“I look for opportunities to read as much as possible in English”;
p = 0.017) was the last metacognitive strategy for which a significant difference
between the intelligence groups was observed. It was the most popular among the
Table 7 ANOVA of intelligence-related average use of Oxford’s (1990a) compensation

strategies
Group C Intelligence level (M) F p
(compensation) Very high High Above Average
SILL items average
24 2.55 (V, H)** 4.00 (V)** 3.42 (V)** 4.20 (V)** 7.725 0.001*
28 3.88 3.20 (A)** 3.42 4.10 (H)** 2.817 0.050*
Note *p < 0.05
**In brackets the group(s) whose mean(s) were revealed by post hoc tests to be significantly
different from the mean of a given group are listed
Table 8 ANOVA of intelligence-related average use of Oxford’s metacognitive strategies

Group D Intelligence level (M) F p
(metacognitive) Very high High Above Average
SILL items average
31 2.77 (AA)** 3.20 3.71 (V)** 3.30 2.827 0.048*
32 4.55 (H)** 3.20 (V, AA, A)** 4.42 (H)** 4.40 (H)** 6.867 0.001*
36 2.66 (H)** 3.40 (V, A)** 2.85 2.40 (H)** 3.643 0.017*
Note *p < 0.05
**In brackets the group(s) whose mean(s) were revealed by post hoc tests to be significantly different
from the mean of a given group are listed
subjects in the subgroup with a high intelligence level (M = 3.40). The following
positions were taken by the subgroup with above average (M = 2.85) and very high
IQ scores (M = 2.66). It was the least popular among the students with an average
intelligence level (M = 2.40) (see Table 8).
4.3.8 Affective Strategies
As Table 9 shows, the 39th strategy (“I try to relax whenever I feel afraid of using
English”; p = 0.001) was used the most often by the students with an average
intelligence level (M = 4.10), whereas it was the least popular among the students
with a high intelligence level (M = 2.23). The subgroup with very high IQ scores
revealed a mean of 3.11, and the one with an above average intelligence level 2.23.
The 41st strategy (“I give myself a reward or treat when I do well in English”;
p = 0.025) was used the most often by the students with above average IQ scores
(M = 2.57). The subgroup with an average intelligence level displayed the mean of
2.30, while the subgroups with high and very high intelligence levels used the
strategy even less frequently, with the means of 1.60 and 1.55, respectively.
Table 9 ANOVA of intelligence-related average use of Oxford’s (1990) affective strategies

Group E Intelligence level (M) F p
(affective) Very high High Above Average
SILL items average
39 3.11 (H, A)** 2.23 (AA, A)** 3.28 (H, A)** 4.10 (V, H, AA)** 6.847 0.001*
41 1.55 (AA, A)** 1.60 (AA)** 2.57 (V, H)** 2.30 (V)** 3.333 0.025*
Note *p < 0.05
**In brackets the group(s) whose mean(s) were revealed by post hoc tests to be significantly different from the
mean of a given group are listed
Table 10 ANOVA of intelligence-related average use of Oxford’s (1990) social strategies

Group F Intelligence level (M) F p
(social) Very high High Above Average
SILL items average
49 2.88 (H, A)** 3.80 (V)** 3.57 3.80 (V)** 2.844 0.048*
50 1.88 (A)** 2.40 2.00 2.80 (V)** 2.878 0.047*
Note *p < 0.05
**In brackets the group(s) whose mean(s) were revealed by post hoc tests to be significantly
different from the mean of a given group are listed
4.3.9 Social Strategies
The 49th strategy (“I ask questions in English”; p = 0.048) was the most popular
among the subjects with average (M = 3.80) and high (M = 3.80) intelligence
levels. It was used less frequently by the subgroups with above average (M = 3.57)
and very high (M = 2.88) IQ scores. Students with an average intelligence level
tended to apply the 50th strategy (“I try to learn about the culture of English
speakers”; p = 0.047) the most often, with the mean frequency of 2.80. It was
employed less often by the other groups: the ones with high (M = 2.40), above
average (M = 2.00), and very high (M = 1.88) intelligence levels (Table 10).
5 Discussion and Conclusions
The aim of this study was to answer the question: Is there a relationship between
intelligence and the use of LLSs. The participants in this study were medium
strategy users (M = 2.96). The most frequent strategy users turned out to be the
subgroup with the lowest intelligence level in this study, that is, the subgroup with
an average intelligence level (M = 3.17). The frequency of strategy use decreased
with an increase in intelligence level. So, the most intelligent subgroup in this
study, the group with a very high intelligence level resorted to strategies the least
often (M = 2.86). The second and third most frequent strategy users were the
subgroups with above average and high IQ scores, with mean strategy frequencies
of 3.0 and 2.94, respectively.
The analysis of intelligence-related individual learner strategy use showed that
the student with the lowest IQ score turned out to be the most frequent strategy user
(M = 3.8), whereas the two students with very high and one student with high IQ
scores employed six groups of Oxford’s (1990) strategies the least frequently
(M = 2.5). The most popular strategies with the most frequent strategy user (i.e., the
subject with an average IQ score) were compensation (M = 4.2), social (M = 4.1),
and cognitive (M = 4.0) strategies. The most popular ones with the least frequent
users (i.e., the subjects with high and very high intelligence levels) were com-
pensation (M = 3.2, 3.0, 3.0), and affective (M = 3.2) strategies. Student 30 was the
least frequent user of metacognitive (M = 1.7) and affective (M = 1.2) strategies,
while Student 32 employed cognitive strategies (M = 2.6) the least often.
The data on strategies where the significant differences were observed showed
that the subgroup of students with an average intelligence level relied on most of
these strategies more frequently than the participants with higher intelligence levels.
The students with higher intelligence levels (a very high and/or high intelligence
level) used only five strategies more often than the participants with lower intel-
ligence levels; these strategies were: a memory strategy (“I use rhymes to remember
new English words”), cognitive strategies (“I read for pleasure in English”, “I try to
find patterns in English”), and metacognitive strategies (“I pay attention when
someone is speaking English”, “I look for opportunities to read as much as possible
in English”). There were no strategies among compensation, affective, and social
strategies which were more popular with the group of participants with higher
intelligence levels.
It should be noted that some general tendencies in LLS use by the participants
with different intelligence scores were revealed in the study:
• There was a relationship between intelligence and the employment of LLSs by
upper-intermediate learners.
• The participants with an average intelligence level employed LLSs more often
than the students with higher intelligence levels.
• The frequency of LLS use decreased with an increase in intelligence level.
• The most frequently used strategies among the four groups of participants were
compensation strategies.
There are considerable limitations inherent in the presented study, however, as it
focused only on the frequency of the use of LLSs by students with different
intelligence levels. The question that arises is the following: Are the most frequent
strategy users effective strategy users? Dörnyei (2005) claims that “a high score on
the SILL is achieved by a learner using as many different strategies as possible and
therefore it is largely the quantity that matters. This is in contradiction with strategy
theory, which has indicated clearly that in strategy use it is not necessarily the
quantity but the quality of the employed strategies that is important” (p. 182). In the
words of Yamamori, Isoda, Hiromori and Oxford (2003, p. 384), “‘The more, the
better’ is not always the case in strategy use”. Very high and high intelligence
students may adopt their own effective strategies and thus may not employ a wide
range of strategies. The analysis of the quality of LLSs would be required to
provide a more complete picture. On the other hand, the results of this study may
suggest that due to the greater frequency of strategy use, subjects with average IQ
scores achieved the same level of language proficiency as the subgroup with very
high IQ scores.
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j.sbspro.2014.03.630
Fostering Learner Autonomy Through
Vocabulary Strategy Training
Maria Pilar Agustín-Llach and Andrés Canga Alonso
Abstract This paper presents the results of a study that investigated the effects of
contextualized training in vocabulary strategy use offered to a group of 97 first-year
undergraduate B1 EFL learners to foster their autonomy in SLA. We wanted to
explore the learners’ vocabulary strategy use as well as to foster their autonomy in
language learning by means of strategy training. Results show that students’ use of
vocabulary strategies prior to training was scarce and occasional. Looking up words
in the dictionary and rote learning to commit words to memory were the most
frequent strategies used at this stage. The use of vocabulary strategies increased for
every particular strategy after the training. However, the ranking of preferred
strategies does not change. It can be assumed that the training resulted in
awareness-raising with respect to strategic behaviors, learner empowerment, as well
as some improvement in learner autonomy in vocabulary learning. Longer and more
sustained training may lead to better results in the development of strategy use.
1 Introduction
Nowadays the command of several foreign languages has special relevance in the
European context to the extent that the European Commission through the Council of
Europe has recommended that all European citizens should master at least two foreign
languages. For this reason, the Council of Europe (2001) advocates a communicative
approach to language teaching that has among its objectives the promotion of learner
autonomy and lifelong learning. Thus, we agree with Holec (1981) that it is necessary
to help a student to “take charge of one’s own learning” (p. 3) by making him or her
aware of the learning progress (Benson, 2001; Benson & Toogood, 2002;
M.P. Agustín-Llach (&) A. Canga Alonso

University of La Rioja, Logroño, Spain
e-mail: maria-del-pilar.agustin@unirioja.es
A. Canga Alonso
e-mail: andres.canga@unirioja.es

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-07764-2_9
142 M.P. Agustín-Llach and A. Canga Alonso
Benson & Voller, 1997; Cotterall & Craabe, 1999; Little, 1991, 1999, 2007; Sinclair,
McGrath, & Lamb, 2000). Since vocabulary knowledge is an essential requirement
for communicative language use, and vocabulary acquisition constitutes an incre-
mental and never-ending process, we believe that vocabulary strategy instruction may
greatly contribute to developing learner autonomy (Cohen, 1999; Dickinson, 1992;
García Magaldi, 2010; Griva, Kamaroudis, & Geladari, 2009; Jiménez Catalán, 2003;
Jones, 2005; Marques, 1999; Nunan, Lai, & Keobke, 1999; Oxford, 1990, 1996,
2011). Consequently, the goal of this paper is to present the findings of study that
aimed to determine whether promoting vocabulary strategy use contributes to fos-
tering learner autonomy. We will start with a brief discussion of the relationship
between autonomy and strategy use, highlighting the role of vocabulary strategies in
the development of learner independence. Then, we will present the study conducted
with the purpose of promoting autonomy through strategy training. Finally, we will
offer some conclusions and implications of the study.
2 Theoretical Framework
We will divide this section into three subsections we consider relevant for the
contextualization of the present paper. First, we review the concept of learner
autonomy and its implications for EFL instruction. The second subsection focuses
on learner training, specifically on strategy training aimed at fostering learner
autonomy. The last part of this theoretical framework concentrates on vocabulary
learning strategies (VLSs).
2.1 Learner Autonomy
In recent decades, the concept of learner autonomy has been discussed very often.
In the 1980s Holec (1981) defined learner autonomy as “the ability to take charge of
one’s own learning” (p. 3). Since then, many scholars working in the field of
language teaching and learning have tried to provide a broader definition of the
term. Thus, Benson (1997) defined the concept as “a construct of attitudes and
abilities which allow learners to take more responsibility for their own learning”
(p. 19). This idea of personal constructs was before that applied by Little (1991) to
autonomous learning following the psychological theory of personal constructs
(Kelly, 1955). Kelly believed that each individual has an insatiable need to find
answers to many questions being asked throughout their lives, which leads to the
creation of one’s own world view. Constructs are the answers to all questions that
we ask, and we try to make sense with reference to the experiences that occur
throughout our lives. They constitute a system since they are closely related and
bipolar, and they interact with each other. Additionally, they are usually associated
Fostering Learner Autonomy Through Vocabulary Strategy Training 143
with learners’ culture or society and are subject to a continuous process of change.
Therefore, teachers should help students see the importance of cognitive and
emotional aspects involved in each of the tasks assigned to them in order to
facilitate their development as autonomous learners.
The development of autonomy in language learning is heavily influenced by
Vygotsky’s (1978) constructivism. This scholar argues that the knowledge and
experience of the learner develops through social interaction in the zone of prox-
imal development. According to this view, greater prominence should be given to
students so they can take responsibility for their own learning. Little, Ridley and
Ushioda (2002, pp. 15–22) proposed three fundamental pedagogical principles to
favor this student-centered approach. They are as follows:
1. Learner empowerment/involvement by transferring part of the responsibility for
teaching-learning to pupils by giving them different options and support.
2. Learner reflection to make students think about what they are learning and why
it is necessary for them.
3. Appropriate target language use by using the foreign language for genuine
communicative purposes.
Little (2007) also understands an autonomous classroom as a place where
interpersonal linkages between its members should be established (the social
interactive view of learning) to achieve the kind of learning that combines indi-
vidual cognitive development with social and interactive development. On the basis
of this social-interactive pattern, interaction between learners can be the most
effective way to stimulate their cognitive growth. This learning model also involves
socialization, acculturation and negotiation. To achieve these ends, it is necessary
for learners to meet the standards of living in the society they belong to so that they
can actively contribute to the multiple processes taking place in it. If learners are
actively involved in their education, they will be able to define the reasons that
compel them to learn in a particular way, set learning goals in their educational
process as well as choose the means to be used to achieve the purposes originally
intended. This is a continuous process that requires negotiation between teachers
and students.
Little (1999, 2007) claims that appropriate target language use in communicative
exchanges is a requirement for these pedagogical principles to be effective since,
similarly to children’s L1 acquisition, foreign language learners need to use the
target language appropriately in order to communicate with peers in the same way
that children do with their parents. For this reason, foreign language proficiency
will be developed to the extent that learners have the opportunity to use the target
language in communicative interactions. Appropriate target language use should be
guided by three principles that are indispensable for learner autonomy and are
intimately linked. First, learners must be able to reflect on their learning process to
develop their own learning plan; second, they have to assume commitments to carry
out the tasks; and, third, they need to evaluate these tasks individually and in
groups. However, to ensure that these methodological guidelines can be
implemented, learners should be made aware of them and be trained so that they
can apply these principles in practice. Hence, the next section will be devoted to
issues in strategy training with reference to EFL vocabulary instruction.
2.2 Strategy Training
Strategy training implies that learners should consider the factors that affect their
learning and discover the learning strategies that suit them best. Training of this
kind focuses their attention on the process of learning so that the emphasis is on
how to learn rather than on what to learn. Learner training aims at “providing
learners with the alternatives from which they can make informed choices about
what, how, why, when and where they learn” (Ellis & Sinclair, 1989, p. 2).
One of the main trends in learner training is to present learners with different
cognitive strategies that serve to support them in their reflection on language, and,
at the same time, help them control their learning process (Benson 2001; Cohen,
1999; Dam, 1995; García Magaldi, 2010; Griva et al., 2009; Oxford, 1990, 1996,
2001, 2011; Sinclair, 2000). Specialists stress the importance of providing learners
with techniques and mechanisms that allow them to be aware of their educational
progress and therefore help them gradually acquire greater autonomy and inde-
pendence. Oxford (2001) refers to learning strategies as those “operations employed
by the learner to aid the acquisition, storage, retrieval and use of information,
specific actions taken by the learner to make learning easier, faster, more enjoyable,
more self-directed, more effective and more transferable to new situations” (p. 166).
Although different classifications exist, four different types of learning strategies
can be distinguished, that is cognitive, metacognitive, affective and social strategies.
Cognitive strategies involve the identification, retention, storage or retrieval of
words, phrases, and other elements of the target language. Metacognitive strategies
deal with pre-assessment and preplanning, online planning and evaluation, and
post-evaluation of language learning and language use activities and events.
Affective strategies serve to regulate emotions, motivation and attitudes, whereas
social strategies include the actions learners choose to take in order to interact with
other learners and with native speakers (Cohen, 1999).
However, as a preliminary step, it is necessary for students to engage explicitly
in their learning; this is called learner empowerment or involvement. Learners
should take an active part in the design of the working plan to be carried out, and
they should analyze it effectively once it is accepted for completion. Thus, nego-
tiation is the basis of teacher-student interaction in the autonomous language
classroom. To facilitate negotiation and planning, Dam (1995) proposes the use of
questionnaires to make students reflect on their learning process. As will be men-
tioned in the section describing the study, we implemented questionnaires to test
students’ awareness of their use of vocabulary strategies.
We agree with Oxford and Leaver (1996) that the aim of the application of
learning strategies is “to help students become more self-directed, autonomous and
effective learners through the improved use of language learning strategies”

(p. 227). For this reason, it is necessary to teach learning strategies for students to
become better and more autonomous learners at five fundamental levels (Oxford &
Leaver, 1996, p. 227):
(1) identifying and improving strategies that are currently used by the individual;
(2) identifying strategies that the individual might not be using but that might be helpful for
the task at hand, and then teaching those strategies; (3) helping students learn to transfer
strategies across language tasks and even across subject fields; (4) aiding students in
evaluating the success of their use of particular strategies with specific tasks; and (5) as-
sisting subjects in gaining learning style flexibility by teaching them strategies that are
instinctively used by students with other learning styles.
Therefore, effective use of learning strategies in the classroom, necessitates

active learning strategy instruction, ensuring growth on the part of each student.
Strategy training involves instruction helping students get to know more about
themselves so that they can try out, test, and become experts in using strategies that
help them the most in the acquisition and use of different elements of the target
language system. It is for this reason that studies have examined the use and
training of strategies of oral production and comprehension (Martín Leralta, 2009;
Pawlak, 2012), grammar learning strategies (Pawlak, 2012), as well as vocabulary
learning strategies (Jiménez Catalán, 2003). In this particular research project, we
are interested in further exploration of vocabulary strategy use and training.
2.3 Vocabulary Learning Strategies
Vocabulary learning strategies are a subcategory of language learning strategies and

constitute actions and thoughts that foreign language learners engage into find out
the meaning of new words, retain them in long-term memory, recall them when
needed in comprehension, and use them in language production (see García
Magaldi, 2010; Griva et al., 2009; Jiménez Catalán, 2003; Khalid Al Shawwa,
2010; Ruutmets, 2005). Several studies have demonstrated that vocabulary strategy
instruction helps students learn and store more vocabulary (e.g., Bornay, 2011;
Mizumoto & Takeuchi, 2009; Ostovar-Namaghi & Rajaee, 2013; Sozler, 2012).
However, to the best of our knowledge, there is paucity of research concerning the
relationship between VLSs and learner autonomy.
At this juncture, it seems necessary to review the existing taxonomies of VLSs.
Schmitt (1997) adapts Cohen’s (1999) and Oxford’s (1996) taxonomies of strate-
gies for vocabulary learning dividing VLSs according to two main phases: dis-
covering new word meanings and consolidating new word forms and meanings.
During these two phases, apart from applying cognitive, metacognitive and
socio-affective strategies, learners also use memory to recall word meaning, relying
on decoding as well as connections with their background knowledge (Griva et al.,
2009). Table 1 presents the classification of VLSs (Griva et al., 2009; Oxford &
Leaver, 1996; Schmitt, 1997) which was employed for the purpose of the present
study. As can be seen, the focus is on cognitive, metacognitive and memory

strategies since that can be considered the most relevant for vocabulary recall and
retention.
3 The Study
3.1 Research Questions
Despite the fact that the literature stresses the importance of learning strategies in
fostering autonomous learning, including the learning of vocabulary, there is a
paucity of studies which would aim to establish a link between vocabulary strategy
training and the development of autonomy in respect to learning lexis. For this
reason, our study set out to answer the following research questions (RQs):
1. Are students aware of the strategies they use to learn new vocabulary?
2. Can students develop an awareness of the strategies they can use to enrich their
vocabulary?
3. Are students able to identify, apply, and acquire new strategies to be more
reflective autonomous learners?
3.2 Participants
A total 97 EFL learners participated in the study. The learners were young adults
(over 18 years of age) attending an EFL course in the second semester of their first
year at university. 25 were enrolled in the primary education degree, 25 in English
studies, 25 in Spanish studies, and 22 in studies in geography and history. Learners
Table 1 A classification of vocabulary learning strategies

Cognitive strategies Metacognitive strategies Memory
strategies
Write the new words with their Group words according to Use rhymes to
meanings on cards grammatical category (nouns, verbs, remember new
Make a mental picture or image adjectives, adverbs) words
of the new words Group words according to topic, Use
Build sentences with the new meaning, spelling or pronunciation mnemonic
words Use a monolingual dictionary to rules
Say the words aloud while obtain the meanings, syntactical or Learn words
writing them, or spell written usage information of the new words by heart and
words to improve spelling Use a bilingual dictionary to obtain repeat them
the meanings, syntactical or usage
information of the new words
represented the B1 proficiency level (Council of Europe, 2001). The four teachers
participating in the study were also requested to complete a questionnaire in order
to obtain basis information about them. Two held a Ph.D. in English applied
linguistics, one had a doctoral degree in English literature, and one had a bachelor
degree in English studies. All of them were members of the teaching staff at
department where the experience took place.
3.3 Instruments
A questionnaire was administered to students at the beginning of the study to find

out about the VLSs they employed (see Appendix A). It was worded in Spanish, the
participants’ L1, and it was intended to provide information about the strategies the
learners used to learn new words (Palacios Martinez, 2006). Eleven strategies listed
in Table 1 were included and the participants were encouraged as well to mention
any other ways in which they learnt new words. In the case of each strategy, they
had to indicate their choices on a four-point Likert scale as follows: 1 = I never use
this strategy, 2 = I sometimes use this strategy, 3 = I frequently use this strategy,
and 4 = I always use this strategy. The same questionnaire was administered eight
weeks later at the end of the semester. However, eight new questions were added
concerning the usefulness of the strategy training and asking students to evaluate
the experience with respect to their use of VLSs as well as the development of
autonomy (see Appendix B).
3.4 Procedures and Analysis
The study spanned the period of eight weeks, which was the duration of a whole
semester. The strategy training started at the beginning of the summer term of 2010.
The teacher-researchers met on several occasions to select the vocabulary strategies
to be introduced in the course of the study. As VLSs need to be taught in the L2
classroom since learners who receive training of this kind perform better on
vocabulary tests than learners who are not provided with such instruction
(Mizumoto & Takeuchi, 2009; Ostovar-Namaghi & Rajaee, 2013; Oxford, 2011;
Oxford & Scarcella, 1994; Sozler, 2012), it was decided that the relevant strategies
should be incorporated into natural flow of the classroom activities. Thus, each
teacher devoted the first fifteen minutes of one session every week to the intro-
duction of VLSs. This consisted of three steps: (1) the strategies were explained
explicitly, (2) they were exemplified and illustrated, and (3) they were practiced
using vocabulary items introduced in a particular class. Thus, strategy training was
not isolated from the content of the course but was integrated within the vocabulary
activities from the course materials. This procedure is also in line with the rec-
ommendations in the literature about the steps to be followed in the development of
learner autonomy (Benson 1997; Dickinson, 1992; Ellis & Sinclair, 1989; Little,
2007; Little, Ridley, & Ushioda, 2002). Self-responsibility, opportunities for
learning, reflection about one’s own learning process and communicative language
use were principles follows in the course of the training undertaken for the purpose
of the study.
4 Results
As for RQ 1 (Are students aware of the strategies they already use to learn new
vocabulary?), the analysis showed that the students’ use of vocabulary strategies
prior to the training was scant and occasional. As shown in Table 2, which lists the
11 VLSs investigated and includes the means reflecting their popularity before and
after the training, looking up words in the dictionary and rote learning to commit
words to memory were the strategies used the most frequently at this stage. The
least frequently applied strategy was using rhymes to associate the new word with a
known vocabulary item. Using monolingual dictionaries was not a popular strategy,
either. Apart from the strategies included in the questionnaire, the learners men-
tioned talking to native speakers, watching films in English, listening to music in
English, creating bilingual lists, or looking for synonyms of new words. The same
questionnaire was completed after the 2-month training to determine the effects of
the training. The analysis showed that the use of vocabulary strategies increased for
every particular strategy except for monolingual dictionary use, which did not seem
to have benefitted from the training experience (see Table 2). However, the order of
Table 2 The means for the use of specific VLSs before and after the training
Strategy Before After
Group words according to grammatical category (nouns, verbs, adjectives, 2.27 2.30
adverbs)
Use rhymes to remember new words 1.45 1.58
Make a mental picture or image of the new words 2.34 2.67
Use mnemonic rules 2.15 2.30
Build sentences with the new words 2.27 2.58
Write the new words with their meanings on cards 1.84 1.88
Say the words aloud while writing them, or spell written words to improve 2.59 2.66
spelling
Learn words by heart and repeat them 2.77 2.96
Group words according to topic, meaning, spelling or pronunciation 2.30 2.58
Use a monolingual dictionary to obtain the meanings, syntactical or usage 1.96 1.96
Use a bilingual dictionary to obtain the meanings, syntactical or usage 2.90 3.08
preferred strategies had not been affected by the intervention, with dictionary
look-up and rote learning still topping the list.
Apart from being asked to indicate the frequency of use of the vocabulary
strategy listed, the students were also requested to assess the usefulness of the
strategy training (RQ 2). 78.70 % of the learners expressed the view that the
training was useful for them because it had helped them learn new vocabulary, they
had become familiar with new ways of studying vocabulary, they had been able to
improve the ways in which they learnt lexis, they had had the opportunity to learn
the meaning of the new words in context, they had become aware of the strategies
being used, and they had had the opportunity to learn vocabulary in a more
enjoyable and interesting way. Such responses indicate that the learners were more
autonomous as well, because they had been able to learn new vocabulary using a
wide range of vocabulary learning strategies.
The students were also asked to mention the strategy that they found the most
useful. As illustrated in Table 3, which lists the most helpful VLSs together with
the percentage of participants who indicated them, there was considerable variation
in this respect and some of the learners decided to list several strategic devices.
Such remarkable differences in the choices made by the participants can perhaps be
attributed to a great diversity in their learning styles preferences, although this issue
was not investigated in the present study. In effect, it seems reasonable to assume
that learners should be provided with a wide range of VLSs so that each of them can
choose those that best fit their individual profile.
As regards the application of previously known vocabulary strategies and those
that were introduced in the course of the training (RQ 3), participants’ responses by
and large confirmed the results for RQ 1 since, following the intervention, they
basically used the same strategies as before, but with greater frequency. The
strategies that were incorporated thanks to the training the students had received are
listed in Table 4. Creating sentences with new words, learning words by heart and
repeating them, and grouping words according to topic, meaning, spelling or pro-
nunciation were the VLSs most frequently learned.
Table 3 The most helpful strategies and percentages of learners who selected them
Strategy %
Build sentences with the new words 31.00
Group words according to grammatical category (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) 19.00
Learn words by heart and repeat them 19.00
Group words according to topic, meaning, spelling or pronunciation 14.28
Use a monolingual/bilingual dictionary to obtain the meanings, syntactical or usage 9.52
Make word lists 9.52
Use mnemonic rules 7.14
Use rhymes to remember new words 7.14
Make a mental picture or image of the new words 7.14
Group words according to their sounds or spelling 4.76
Table 4 Strategies learnt through training and percentages of learners who learned them
Strategy %
Build sentences with the new words 14.28
Learn words by heart and repeat them 14.28
Group words according to topic, meaning, spelling or pronunciation 14.28
Group words according to their sounds or spelling 9.52
Make a mental picture or image of the new words 9.52
Use mnemonic rules 4.76
Make word lists 4.76
Use rhymes to remember new words 2.38
As for the students’ reflection on the quality of the intervention, only 13 sug-
gested that improvements should be made to the training program. Ten of those
advised paying more attention the use of vocabulary in speaking. One student called
for the inclusion of more reading activities, one suggested more frequent use of the
targeted words by the teacher, and one pointed to the necessity of extending the
duration of the training. The last observation is in line with the observation made by
the teachers that more time should be dedicated to oral and written practice of the
new lexical items.
In general, except for five negative answers, the learners agreed that the training
program had been well implemented and integrated into the course. This contention
concurs with our believe that vocabulary strategy training cannot be an isolated
activity but has to be an integral part of everyday instruction. This belief is linked
with the fact that among the difficulties learners face when acquiring a foreign
language, vocabulary is one of the most important. However, when asked about these
problems, the learners had considerable difficulty in identifying them. Some alluded
to pronunciation and the confusion caused by the similarity of some words, especially
phrasal verbs, whereas some mentioned problems with guessing what a word means
in context. The latter comment is very interesting because it is consistent with
research findings indicating the difficulties involved in guessing meaning from
context (cf. Laufer, 2005). These problems are in all likelihood related to the fact that
effective use of this VLS requires familiarity with 95–98 % of the words in a given
text (cf. Nation, 2006). There is also the possibility of a wrong guess, a misinter-
pretation or non-availability of clues, the existence of misleading, partial clues, or
suppressed clues, and simply lack of an attempt to guess (Laufer, 2005).
Despite the difficulties faced, the learners were aware that some tasks can help
them improve their vocabulary, with their suggestions and the percentages of
participants making them included in Table 5. Very striking is the high percentage
of learners who recognized the need to learn harder and practice more in order to
acquire vocabulary. It can thus be assumed that the learners are conscious of the
processes of vocabulary acquisition and acknowledge that VLSs can act as useful
devices in facilitating this process. In addition, 25 learners opted for more active
Table 5 Tasks for improvement of vocabulary and percentages of learners listing them
Strategy %
Daily practice using the new vocabulary 57.14
Using the dictionary (meaning, pronunciation, syntactic information) 12.00
Getting more exposure (films or songs) 12.00
Reading 12.00
Activating known vocabulary in writing and speaking 4.76
Using mnemonics 2.38
participation in class and greater involvement in strategy training, and one

suggested that more strategies should be introduced and practiced.
5 Discussion
Careful examination of the strategies mentioned by learners allows extracting some

common features of such VLSs. Basically, these strategies are cognitively very
simple and require little mental effort for their implementation. In this sense, they
are economical since they require little effort and can still produce relatively good
outcomes. Considering this, it is not surprising that the learners include these VLSs
among strategies that they applied spontaneously. This result is to some extent
predictable, since the training made explicit the strategies that learners may have
known implicitly but were unable to use in an active way. Following this reasoning,
it should not come as a surprise that monolingual dictionary use did not become
more frequent as a result of the training because it is a cognitively and linguistically
very complex strategy. It is much more demanding than many other VLSs and thus
its application calls for greater proficiency in the target language, greater cognitive
ability as well as metalinguistic awareness. This conclusion is especially powerful if
we also consider the strategies the learners claimed to be using before the training
and which were not included in the questionnaire.
The learners also mentioned an array of other VLSs that they were familiar with
and used. The most popular included learning chunks from songs or films, grouping
verbs according to their prepositional complements, as well as learning words
contextualized within sentences. If we compare these strategies with the ones
learners had mentioned before the training took place, we can observe considerable
progress with regard to the cognitive and linguistic complexity of the strategies
used. This breakthrough provides evidence for the benefits of the training in terms
of enhancing learners’ target language proficiency and boosting vocabulary strategy
use. What is important, the training not only contributed to the emergence of new
vocabulary strategies in the learners’ strategic repertoires, but also triggered
activation of previously known strategies, which remained unused or were under-

used. In fact, the participants seemed to have realized the relevance of VLSs for the
second language acquisition process, which may testify to greater autonomy in
learning and using the target language.
6 Conclusion
As a general conclusion, we can observe that vocabulary strategy use increased

following the training. This increase points to an awareness-raising effect of the
intervention with respect to strategic behavior and learner empowerment, and,
therefore, also indicates enhancement of the students’ autonomy in vocabulary
learning (Dam & Legenhausen, 1996; Khalid Al Shawwa, 2010; Little, 2007). It
can be assumed that longer, more systematic and more sustained training could
have produced even better results with reference to vocabulary strategy use. The
intervention undertaken in the present study constitutes the first step towards
understanding, awareness, development and skillful use of VLSs. Students also
acknowledged the utility of the training for vocabulary acquisition, as well as the
development of a certain degree of autonomy in vocabulary learning. In sum, the
time devoted to autonomous practice should be greater since this practice proved
beneficial. Furthermore, the results revealed that the strategy training was effective,
because, as claimed by the learners, it led to the transfer of strategies to other
contexts within the English course. It can also be stated that the pedagogic goals of
the study were also attained. We wanted to promote learner autonomy and provide
the learners with the opportunity to develop awareness of vocabulary strategy use.
Additionally, we intended to offer learners an appropriate context in which they
could be trained and autonomously use vocabulary strategies in order to improve
their English vocabulary. We succeeded on all these counts.
In conclusion, the present study implemented a vocabulary strategy training
program that aimed at encouraging learners to learn new words autonomously, to
increase their receptive and productive vocabulary in English, and to produce a
lexical competence characterized by greater breadth and depth of vocabulary
knowledge. In doing so, we complied with the fundamental principles of fostering
learner autonomy through strategy training by aiding the students learn new VLSs,
refreshing vocabulary strategies they already knew, and getting them to evaluate
and better understand the processes involved in learning vocabulary in an additional
language.
Appendix A
Nombre:
Apellidos:
Fecha:
Mi manera de aprender
ESTRATEGIAS DE VOCABULARIO
Lo que hago para memorizar palabras nuevas (marca con una cruz la casilla que
corresponda)
1. Agrupo las palabras de acuerdo con su categoría gramatical (nombres, verbos, adjetivos).
Nunca En ocasiones A menudo Siempre
2. Utilizo rimas para recordar las palabras nuevas.

3. Trato de hacer una imagen o fotografía mental de las nuevas palabras.

4. Utilizo algún tipo de regla nemotécnica.

5. Trato de construir oraciones con las palabras nuevas.

6. Escribo las palabras nuevas en tarjetas con el significado.

7. Pronuncio las palabras en voz alta a la vez que las escribo, o deletreo las palabras escritas para
mejorar la ortografía de las palabras.
8. Intento recordarme a mí mismo las últimas palabras que aprendí.

9. Agrupo las palabras de acuerdo con el tema, el significado, la ortografía o la

pronunciación.
10. Uso el diccionario monolingüe para extraer información sobre el significado, la sintaxis, o el
uso de las palabras.
11. Uso el diccionario bilingüe para extraer información sobre el significado, la sintaxis, o el uso
de las palabras.
Añade cualquier otra cosa que hagas si no comprendes lo que alguien dice:
………………………………………………………………………………….
Appendix B
Nombre:
Apellidos:
Fecha:
Mi manera de aprender
ESTRATEGIAS DE VOCABULARIO
Lo que hago para memorizar palabras nuevas (marca con una cruz la casilla que
corresponda)
1. Agrupo las palabras de acuerdo con su categoría gramatical (nombres, verbos, adjetivos).
2. Utilizo rimas para recordar las palabras nuevas.

3. Trato de hacer una imagen o fotografía mental de las nuevas palabras.

4. Utilizo algún tipo de regla nemotécnica.

5. Trato de construir oraciones con las palabras nuevas.

6. Escribo las palabras nuevas en tarjetas con el significado.

7. Pronuncio las palabras en voz alta a la vez que las escribo, o deletreo las palabras escritas para
mejorar la ortografía de las palabras.
8. Intento recordarme a mí mismo las últimas palabras que aprendí.

9. Agrupo las palabras de acuerdo con el tema, el significado, la ortografía o la

pronunciación.
10. Uso el diccionario monolingüe para extraer información sobre el significado, la sintaxis, o el
uso de las palabras.
11. Uso el diccionario bilingüe para extraer información sobre el significado, la sintaxis, o el uso
de las palabras.
Añade cualquier otra cosa que hagas si no comprendes lo que alguien dice:
………………………………………………………………………………….....
…………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………...
Ahora contesta a las siguientes preguntas:

1. ¿te ha sido útil y en qué medida el entrenamiento?
2. si te ha sido, ¿qué estrategias te han resultado más útiles?
3. ¿qué estrategias utilizas ahora que no utilizases antes?
4. ¿qué mejoras introducirías en el programa para sucesivos estudiantes?
5. ¿crees que el programa de estrategias ha estado bien integrado en el curso?
6. ¿con qué dificultades te has encontrado a la hora de aprender vocabulario?
7. ¿que podrías hacer para mejorar el vocabulario?
8. ¿qué otras actividades piensas que podría incorporar el profesor?
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Part III
Teacher Autonomy
Preservice Teachers’ Perceptions
of Teacher Autonomy
Danuta Gabryś-Barker
Abstract A specific topic focus and other major concerns in preservice language
teacher education, together with ways of enhancing teacher growth, are very
strongly highlighted by European Union initiatives in education. Also various
European agencies, such as, for example, the Council of Europe, have made a
significant contribution to the development of educational guidelines and programs
for language learners and language teachers. They all strongly voice the need to
enhance teacher and learner autonomy by promoting, among other things, the
concept of reflectivity and self-assessment in both language teaching and learning
as key to the development of autonomy. This article looks at how a group of EFL
preservice teachers perceive teacher autonomy as a construct, what factors con-
tribute to these perceptions, and what the limitations and constraints on teacher
autonomy pointed out by the trainees are. Becoming more aware of these views can
contribute to improvement in training programs implemented in educational insti-
tutions concerned with FL teacher training. There seems to be a special need to
focus more explicitly on developing the understanding of various dimensions of
teacher autonomy and ways of achieving it, as teacher autonomy is at the heart of
modern approaches to education and professional development.
1 Introduction
Globalization brought about by technological, social and economic changes created

a context in which education has become an area of constant change and challenge.
This challenge has to be answered by the way educationalists and, above all,
teachers see themselves as harbingers of this change. Thus teacher training pro-
grams of the present have to respond to the need to create new learning environ-
ments that would, as Broadbent (2003, p. 111) puts it, “assist individuals to become
proactive in reshaping their personal, professional, and recreational lives (…) to
D. Gabryś-Barker (&)
University of Silesia, Sosnowiec, Poland
e-mail: danuta.gabrys@gmail.com

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-07764-2_10
162 D. Gabryś-Barker
promote active open-mindedness and the capacity to be creative (…) to value the
concept of lifelong learning (…) and to construct alternative visions of teaching and
learning”. The function of teacher training programs is to make preservice teachers
see their learning to teach as a constructive process of active involvement in cre-
ating knowledge personally relevant to themselves and promoting their “personal
growth and change” (Broadbent, 2003, p. 111). This active involvement is con-
ducive to teacher autonomy. Modern teacher training programs, such as the one
introduced at the School of Education of the Australian Catholic University, assume
that having completed the training course a preservice teacher will have developed
the following attributes (Broadbent, 2003, pp. 111–112):
• being able to articulate a personal vision or philosophy;
• having a deep knowledge, critical understanding of, and enthusiasm for the
intellectual content, discourses, and values associated with the disciplines from
which the subjects they teach are derived, and as appropriate to the specific
contexts within which they teach;
• holding high expectations and professional goals;
• being able to inspire the learning of others;
• displaying adeptness and discernment in the utilization of information
technologies;
• valuing the individuality, diversity and contribution of others;
• displaying creative, constructive, and flexible thinking;
• valuing the continuum of learning (lifelong).
Each of the above attributes relates directly to teachers’ reflectivity and critical
thinking which derive from the need to challenge existing beliefs, schemata and
preexisting knowledge. Thus, they are attributes of an autonomous practitioner.
2 Council of Europe Programs for Teacher Development
A specific topic focus and other major concerns in preservice language teacher
education as well as ways of enhancing teacher development are emphasized by the
Council of Europe and constitute a significant contribution to the development of
educational guidelines and programs for language learners and language teachers.
They all strongly stress the need to enhance teacher and learner autonomy by
promoting, among other things, the practice of reflectivity and self-assessment in
both language teaching and learning. The following documents offer a compre-
hensive set of references and guidelines to this end:
• The European language portfolio (ELP) aims to promote learner-centered
approaches to teaching in which self-assessment is vital; ELP is a practical tool
for learner self-assessment. After an initial period of piloting, ELP has been
adopted by some Polish schools, either being imposed by local educational
authorities or embraced by individual teachers on their own initiative.
Preservice Teachers’ Perceptions of Teacher Autonomy 163
• The European profile for language teacher education (EPLTE) is a proposal for
language teacher education in the 21st century, which makes suggestions con-
cerning the “structure of educational courses, the knowledge and understanding
central to foreign language teaching, the diversity of teaching and learning
strategies and skills and the kinds of values language teaching should encourage
and promote” (Kelly & Grenfell, 2004, www.lang.soton.ac.uk/profile/index.
html).
• The European portfolio for student teachers of languages (EPOSTL) is “a
document intended for students undergoing their initial teacher education which
encourages them to reflect on the didactic knowledge and skills necessary to
teach languages, helps them to assess their own didactic competences and
enables them to monitor their progress and to record their experiences of teaching
during the course of their teacher education” (www.ecml.at/mtp2/FTE).
It is appropriate to acknowledge the value of these documents, especially the last
one (EPOSTL), as the most relevant to this discussion. The European portfolio for
student teachers of languages is described by its authors as “[a] reflection tool for
language teacher education” (http://www.ecml.at/mtp2/FTE/). It was created with
the purpose of standardizing teacher education within the European Union.
EPOSTL is not only a policy document but also a practical instrument for pre-
service teachers of languages. It consists of three sections: a personal statement, a
trainee’s reflection on what teaching involves, especially at the initiation stage; a
self-assessment, a list of “can-do descriptors relating to didactic competences”; and
a dossier, trainee teachers’ record of their progress and work done systematically.
The aims of the EPOSTL as defined in the document are (www.ecml.at/mtp2/FTE):
1. To encourage students to reflect on the competences a teacher strives to attain
and on the underlying knowledge which feeds these competences.
2. To help prepare students for their future profession in a variety of teaching
contexts.
3. To promote discussion between students and their teacher educators and
mentors.
4. To facilitate self-assessment of students’ competence.
5. To help students develop awareness of their strengths and weaknesses related to
teaching.
6. To provide an instrument which helps chart progress.
7. To serve as the springboard for discussions, topics for term papers, research
projects etc.
8. To provide support during teaching practice and assist in discussions with
mentors; this will help mentors to provide systematic feedback.
EPOSTL has been constructed with the idea that it should “be available to students
at the beginning of their teacher education and it should accompany them
throughout their teacher education, teaching practice and into their profession”
(www.ecml.at/mtp2/FTE). However, it should also be emphasized that EPOSTL is

an important instrument for teacher trainers and mentors in their work with future
teachers and should be regarded as playing “a useful complementary role to that of
the European profile for language teacher education” (Gabryś-Barker, 2012).
3 Profile of a Preservice Teacher
The picture of preservice teachers that emerges across various studies and from my
own research (see overview in Gabryś-Barker, 2012) seems to be fairly consistent
on how this group of professionals-to-be is characterized. The findings almost
unanimously show student teachers as a group of future professionals who go
through near traumatic experiences in confrontation with their deeply-ingrained and
idealistic view of the profession, invoking a disorienting contrast between the
theory they acquired as a body of knowledge and what they are faced with as
classroom reality. Perceptions of the classroom as imagined versus the reality
experienced make trainees take a different stand than the one they usually intend—
they struggle for ‘survival’ (Appel, 1995; Burden, 1980; Katz, 1979; Mok, 2005).
Hence trainees’ major concerns focus on their own affectivity and the way they are
seen by their mentors, their peers and, most of all, by students in the classroom.
They are greatly concerned with building up their authority with their pupils, either
by being overwhelmingly friendly or, contrastingly, extremely authoritarian and
controlling. As theoretical knowledge fails, they tend to revert to the models of
teaching known to them, their own teachers at different levels of education. Even
though these models were often criticized by them, now they seem to offer a safe
way of keeping face and ‘surviving’. With passing time, trainees’ motivations are
exposed to challenges and may undergo certain changes or at least be severely
shaken up, as their first expectations are not fully met. They become very techni-
cally oriented in their classroom concerns and focus on the techniques of teaching
and how these can help them become real professionals, denying or neglecting their
own needs, such as that, for example, for genuine satisfaction which would help to
maintain an enthusiastic approach to teaching (Gabryś-Barker, 2008). Looking at
the initial motivation to teach and become qualified teachers, the trainees express
during their first experiences, Younger, Brindley, Pedder and Hagger (2004, p. 262)
conclude: “Trainees’ own thinking at the start of their teacher training shows a
sophisticated grasp of the type of teachers they aspired to become, based upon their
models of outstanding teachers and the quality of the classroom practice they have
experienced as pupils or observed as trainees”.
In many studies, trainee-teachers present themselves as idealistic and carrying
out a mission, which is not, however, always well-grounded in their own individual
teaching contexts (e.g., Gabryś-Barker, 2008). What seems most important in these
narratives is that all the trainees see themselves as involved in a developmental
process of:
• becoming more aware and more reflective, more creative and able to share their
knowledge;
• becoming better able to share themselves as people with their own learners;
• revealing a very strong need to engage in reflection on themselves in their own
classrooms (e.g., Gabryś-Barker, 2012; Younger et al., 2004) in which perhaps
they do not go far enough into the topic; however, such reflections constitute a
starting point for developing the reflective abilities of those trainees in the
course of their studies and the practicum period at schools; the first step is
developing awareness of this need and fostering the willingness to reflect.
Motivations to study to become a teacher are related to the main beliefs
expressed by the student-teachers about teaching. Here they are described in order
of frequency as:
• a mission to be accomplished;
• a highly specialist job requiring professionalism;
• sharing of knowledge developed through study and experience;
• performing a well-prepared role.
These systems of beliefs can be conceptualized as metaphors of a victorious battle,
a lighthouse showing the way in difficulties, and a guided tour or acting on the
stage. They derive from:
• models of former teachers that the trainees recover from their memory, mostly
from primary and secondary level experiences—positive examples and, as such,
copied by the trainees in their own classrooms, but also negative ones and, as
such, rejected by them;
• students’ own personality features which determine preferred styles of man-
agement and interaction with the learners;
• the new teaching experiences of trainees.
The major practical experiences of teaching influence evolving motivation to
teach and also systems of beliefs previously held, now finally confronted with
classroom reality. The majority of trainees see the period of school placement as
extremely fruitful, but not without flaws. The major drawbacks as described in the
studies (Hascher, Cocard, & Moser, 2004; Wilson, Floden, & Ferrini-Mundy, 2002)
derive from the different attitudes and different treatments which the institutions
where the trainees are put provide. This mostly relates to the inadequacy of men-
toring and mentor preparation and excessive control over the trainees-teachers,
which is seen as very limiting and not sufficiently helpful as feedback and assis-
tance. Also, as expected, the amount of teaching practice which is a prescribed part
of the teaching module in the different teacher training institutions preservice
teachers come from is always seen as insufficient. During this school period, trai-
nees try out their theoretical knowledge and, becoming dissatisfied, first discard it
and build their ‘expertise’ on a more intuitive and experiential basis. However, with
time, they mostly modify their judgements by becoming more aware that perhaps it
is not the flaws in the theory they are familiar with, but their own incomplete
knowledge in certain areas of teaching and its management or the specificity of a

situation they find themselves in, that need to be tackled (Gabryś-Barker, 2012).
These attitudes of trainees can be read as important indicators of the way in
which preservice preparation should be developed. Teacher educators and trainers
should be aware of them, as they have major implications for the way training
programs need to be constructed and how their general objectives should be for-
mulated. Much attention should be paid to developing fully aware teachers, ones
whose professional awareness comes not only from knowledge acquired from
experience but also from ‘digesting’ it in reflection. Reflective teaching, primarily a
focus on developing the ability to reflect at the preservice level, should be con-
sidered a major objective in creating successful teachers (Gabryś-Barker, 2012).
4 Becoming Reflective—Becoming Autonomous
Following Cole (2005, p. 131), it can be assumed that “[a]n effective teacher is
someone who sees herself or himself as a learner. Teachers who evaluate and
change their own practice to benefit their pupils are rewarding colleagues to work
with. They make teaching a highly creative experience”. At the same time, what
Loughran (1996, p. 25) sees as key to creating effective teachers when working with
student-teachers on their professional development is the belief that “(…) teaching
needs to be interactive and challenging as learning does not occur just by listening,
it occurs by reconsidering one’s understanding through deeds, thoughts and actions.
Therefore, so that student-teachers’ learning about teaching is meaningful, the
teaching employed should challenge and motivate them to take steps to make new
meaning from teaching and learning episodes”.
The understanding of the processes involved in teaching, comprehended as a
learning process, derives from a conscious and structured reflection on these very
processes. A lot has been written about reflectivity in educational contexts by,
among many others, Loughran (1996), Moon (2004), and Pollard (2005), Pollard
and Tann (1994), Posner (1989), Richards and Lockhart (1994), Schön (1987). The
training programs and ways of developing reflectivity at the early stages of pro-
fessional induction are of pivotal importance at the preservice stage, as this is still a
learning stage and no habits have been established yet as to teaching routines. Thus,
reflectivity has to be seen as a developmental process of learning about teaching,
dependent on the individual characteristics of teachers, their styles of thinking and
ways of learning—the more reflectivity, the more autonomy will be observed.
It can be safely assumed that the development of reflectivity in the teaching
context of preservice teachers is not only theory-based, through the courses trainees
attend, but it mostly means experiential learning at school where their practicum
occurs (Gabryś-Barker, 2012). As Samuels and Betts (2007, p. 269) state, “[e]
xperiences, whether in the context of work or personal lives, have the potential to
be rich sources of learning. Through reflection we can explore experience so that it
becomes a mental event we can play with, relive, and develop into future actions.
There is a potential to reflect on intentions as well as actions, thoughts and feel-

ings”. The role of reflection in professional contexts, such as in this case teaching, is
seen in:
• creating an opportunity to confront knowledge learnt and knowledge created in
use;
• establishing a personal meaning of an experience and interpretation of it;
• challenging beliefs and individually-made assumptions;
• facing challenges and uncertain situations;
• reexamining and building new knowledge based on experiential learning;
• avoiding routine and introducing new solutions to conflict, uncertain or unre-
solved situations and, thus developing teacher autonomy.
The ability to reflect and one’s reflectivity are developmental, and can be
exposed to formal instruction, both theoretical and practical, to attain higher levels
of competence. Professional experience is to provide a grounding for this devel-
opment. So, it may be assumed that different groups of teachers will exhibit dif-
ferent levels of reflectivity, depending on how long they have been in the profession
and what training they have received. However, it is also crucial to bear in mind that
reflectivity is not an automatically developed quality and even experienced teachers
will not necessarily exhibit it (Gabryś-Barker, 2012).
5 Teacher Autonomy from the Preservice Teacher’s

Perspective—The Study
The study aimed at describing a group of EFL preservice teachers in terms of their
understanding of the construct of teacher autonomy and factors which contribute to
this understanding. As it is a data-driven study, no detailed research questions were
posed. Inductive categories, based on the data collected from the subjects, constitute
the basis for the analysis. The following inductive categories were identified in the
data:
• definitions of teacher autonomy;
• a profile of an autonomous FL teacher;
• relations between teacher autonomy and learner autonomy;
• constraints on teacher autonomy;
• self-assessment in terms of degree of autonomy of the subjects participating in
the study.
It is hoped that the findings of the study can contribute to improvement in training
programs, which are implemented in FL teacher training institutions.
5.1 The Participants and the Tool
The participants of the study were 28 preservice teachers of English, still university
students at the time when the data was collected. Their contact with teaching was
mostly through the obligatory teaching practice they were involved in at the
moment of study and, for most of them, one-to-one tutorials run on a private basis.
They all seemed to be highly motivated to become teachers and thus were seriously
involved in their professional development. What is more, their enthusiasm for
teaching and becoming better with every lesson taught was openly expressed by
them in personal communications. Their understanding of the construct of teacher
autonomy was elicited in a free-form 400-word reflective essay on the topic:
“Teacher autonomy from the perspective of a preservice EFL teacher”. The students
were asked to write the essay as part of their TEFL course requirements. As a
follow up, it also served the purpose of discussing teacher autonomy in a seminar
class.
5.2 Results
5.2.1 The Focus of Narratives
As expected, the subjects commented on teacher autonomy by, first of all, defining
the concept as they understood it and characterizing an autonomous teacher.
A significant part of the texts produced reflected upon the students’ own exposure
to teacher autonomy and the autonomous teachers they had met in their own
learning time at primary and secondary schools. What was also strongly empha-
sized in the narratives was the relation between teacher and learner autonomy. The
trainees commented on and evaluated the advantages and disadvantages of teacher
autonomy in the preservice context. Teacher autonomy was described as influenced
both by internal and external factors, most of which were seen as constraining its
development. The quotations from the students’ narratives provided below have not
been altered in any way.
5.2.2 Defining Autonomy
By analogy with learner autonomy, which is a concept discussed extensively in

teacher training programs at universities and other teacher training institutions, the
trainees see teacher autonomy as independence from external factors and people
involved in the educational process:
Preservice teachers who haven’t had their school practice yet frequently think of being
autonomous as not being dependent on the principal, school curriculum or anyone else
(S1).
Teacher autonomy is freedom from control of others in teacher’s professional development
(S10).
It is important for teachers to be free from others (S14).
For some of the trainees, teacher autonomy is defined as one’s awareness of choices
and the changed perception of the concept of teaching and the teacher:
Teacher autonomy is first of all about changing the attitude towards teaching. A teacher is
not a leader or ‘dictator’ during a lesson, but a facilitator. He is to assist and guide students
(S14).
Teacher autonomy starts inside his/her mind and personal perception of learners, language,
teaching and everything what he/she encounters at school while teaching (S17).
This independence or freedom, however, is not seen as the unlimited possibility

of making one’s own decisions concerning teaching but it implies full responsibility
for the decisions made:
Teacher autonomy is the capacity and freedom but mostly responsibility to make choices
concerning one’s own teaching (S2).
The teacher should know responsibility for his/her own work and should take into account
that what is given and presented to learners now will have its results in future (S27).
Teacher autonomy relates not only to responsibility for teaching and learners but
also to one’s professional development, the ability to self-direct it and self-evaluate
its effectiveness by various means. At the same time, professional development is
seen both as an individual process (via diary writing) and a cooperative one (by
conducting action research):
Being an autonomous teacher (…) is the only way in which a teacher can develop his/her
teaching skills and his/her language proficiency (S4).
Teacher autonomy involves flexibility, self-evaluation, self-directed teaching and profes-
sional development (S5).
Teacher autonomy characterizes itself by the teacher’s willingness to extend and develop
his knowledge all the time (…) not only the linguistic knowledge but also cultural and
pedagogical. One of the most popular and effective ways to do it is action research in which
he/she investigates the problem she/he has in order to improve teaching. Action research is
collaborative (…) The teacher has to collaborate with the learners and colleagues (S20).
Teachers can also gather in groups to talk about teaching problems, materials and methods
(S4).
Teacher autonomy also involves a high degree of flexibility expressed by designing

creative and innovative techniques, tasks and materials and by allowing learners to
participate in decision-making:
An autonomous teacher also looks for new materials and innovative techniques. Moreover,
he or she allows the students to make their own decisions about their learning. In this way
not only a teacher develops his/her autonomy, but also enables his/her students to become
autonomous (S4).
Teacher autonomy is an ability of creating a lesson without a lot of external aids (S19).
For all the subjects, teacher autonomy is inevitably associated with the role of
reflection in one’s own teaching:
Autonomous teachers involve elements of reflective teaching as well as they analyze
cognitive and affective aspects of their lessons. (…) In other words, he/she is a kind of
reflective practitioner who is able to evaluate himself/herself (S6).
Teacher autonomy implies responsibility and self-direction in the teaching process. It is,
therefore, connected with reflection in teaching, since through reflection one may diagnose
both the problems and the needs of one’s learners in order to modify the teaching process
(S7).
Autonomous teachers have a strong personal responsibility for their teaching. Their con-
stant reflections and analysis have substantial influence on the teaching process (S22).
Autonomy is not only the feeling of responsibility for one’s own learning and teaching, but
also consciousness of one’s imperfection and constant training (S24).
The trainees also define autonomy as a stage of being not only mature as a teacher
but also having a unique personality and individuality, and perceiving this pro-
fession as one’s calling (vocation):
Teacher autonomy is teacher maturity. An autonomous teacher is a person, who looks
beyond the minimum. He/she has clearly stated goals, which are little higher than what is
demanded from him/her (S17).
The key factors that come together to form what I call and what I perceive as teacher
autonomy are a distinctive, unique personality that make a teacher stand out and make his
lessons desirable (S16).
Teaching is his or her calling. He/she does not feel it as a burden but it is a way of
developing his/her gifts, skills and passions (S24).
5.2.3 The Profile of an Autonomous Teacher
What follows from the above reflections on the concept of teacher autonomy is
evident in the way trainees describe the profile of an autonomous teacher. First of
all, the trainees characterize an autonomous teacher as someone who is fully
competent as a professional:
The first aspect of the teacher’s responsibility is being a competent teacher, that is a
knowledge giver. Students should know that they can depend on their teacher (S24).
In my opinion, successful teacher is an autonomous teacher who has a strong sense of
personal responsibility for his/ her teaching (…) he/she has to invest a lot of time and effort
to develop his linguistic knowledge and pedagogical skills. This is helpful in building trust
between the tea chef and the students (S25).
The teacher in order to be autonomous should possess a wide range of competences:

psycholinguistic, pedagogical, pragmatic and discourse competence. All of them influence
teacher autonomy and build confidence for that person (S27).
An autonomous teacher is also a teacher with a strong sense of responsibility and

awareness of his or her own need for development, and who expresses a willingness
to change through life-long education:
From the day I started working as a part-time teacher I have been striving for autonomy via
self-reflection as I finally understood that as long as I am able to notice the problem,
evaluate it, react and feel good with myself as a teacher despite the difficulties, I am on my
way to achieve the goal of autonomy (S1).
One of constitutive traits of an autonomous teacher is his/her motivation and atti-

tude to work:
Teacher’s autonomy is his/her self-awareness, motivation and even empathy. When the
teacher show empathy, he/she builds his/her image of a good teacher and a good person,
because autonomous teacher equals autonomous person (S27).
Teacher autonomy, in my opinion, is also connected with his/her positive attitudes towards
himself/herself, learners, teaching. (…) Also his/her attitude towards work means not
perceiving it as something harmful and wasted time, but to be personally engaged and
looking for exposure beyond the classroom (S17).
A strong emphasis is placed on the teacher’s knowledge of his or her learners

and attitudes towards them, and the ability to create a classroom atmosphere that
facilitates the learning process and builds mutual respect between the teacher and
the learners:
An autonomous teacher should be aware of his/her students, should not lack confidence,
should be aware of eye-contact. An autonomous teacher knows classroom dynamics,
knows that everyone has his/her place in the class (…) Moreover, the teacher’s responsi-
bility is to know his/her group (S27).
Autonomous teachers are able to create better atmosphere in the classroom (S26).
Also certain personality features are seen as more conducive to the development
of one’s autonomy:
(…) an autonomous teacher is characterized by risk-taking, self-determination, experi-
mentation and inquiry (S10).
The autonomous teachers are powerful because they are self-confident and they love what
they do. Their choice of profession was not accidental but conscious and deliberate (S18).
(…) the autonomous teacher is both independent and cooperative. S/he shares her/his
experiences with the peers in order to both draw from their experiences and allow them to
use hers/his (S15).
The trainees also value and see as indispensable the teacher’s active involvement
in school life and his or her taking an interest in its problems, actions clearly
perceived as a sign of autonomy:
Another important issue of teacher autonomy, in my opinion, is his or her involvement in

the pedagogical problems of the school, for example in the discussion on the topics of
misbehavior, addictions and their effects on learners’ health (S25).
In sum, an autonomous teacher must be a successful teacher, as autonomy leads

to competence and competence leads to effectiveness in teaching.
5.2.4 Teacher Autonomy Versus Learner Autonomy
The perception of the interrelatedness of teacher autonomy and learner autonomy is

very strongly expressed in all the narratives. The trainees hold the view that teacher
autonomy leads to learner autonomy and only an autonomous teacher, as described
earlier, can facilitate the development of autonomy in his or her learners:
(…) in self-directing our own teaching we have to account for the learners’ needs and aid
our students in the development of their own autonomy. Autonomous teaching and learning
should always be interconnected and developed in cooperation of teachers and their stu-
dents. It is only then that successful teaching and learning processes are ensured (S7).
Only an autonomous teacher is able to introduce the concept of autonomy to his or her
students (S26).
Autonomy is a two-sided process and for a learner to be autonomous, the teacher also has to
be autonomous (S20).
A teacher should be autonomous in order to teach his/her learners how to be autonomous
(S21).
I think it is better to share autonomy with students (S23).
I am convinced that to develop learner autonomy it is necessary for the teacher to be
autonomous (S15).
Teacher autonomy is necessary to teach students how to work on their own (S19).
Being convinced of the importance of teacher autonomy and often expressing

their negative view of their own experience of non-autonomous teachers, the trai-
nees perceive their training programs and seminar discussions as focusing exten-
sively on learner autonomy, without a necessary focus on teacher autonomy and
ways of developing it:
One thing is noticeable, there is much more thinking devoted to learners and learning
process and too little about teachers and teaching process (S10).
Much is said and taught about learner autonomy. Learner autonomy is promoted and
implemented during lessons but it is important to point out that teacher autonomy is most
important (S14).
Although the concept of learner autonomy as responsibility for one’s learning process is
widely discussed, teacher autonomy is also crucial in the process of teaching and learning
(S26).
5.2.5 Constraints on Teacher Autonomy
Generally speaking, the trainees believe that being a teacher offers more possibil-
ities of being autonomous than any other profession:
I have more freedom in developing autonomy as a teacher that most other professionals
have (S7).
Even preservice teachers are given the right to choose a coursebook, which would be best
for the students. Even though teachers have to stick to their curriculum, they are free to use
one method or another, they are given an opportunity to contribute to teaching by creating
extra materials to help students in their language development (S8).
However, this freedom is not without constraints. These limiting factors come from
both internal and external sources. The internal ones derive from teachers’ per-
ceptions of their own inadequacies, the amount of time and effort necessary to be
autonomous and their unpreparedness to respond to the challenge of being
autonomous:
Most teachers have to follow a certain curriculum and adjust the goals and procedures used
to the requirements included in it (S7).
Developing teacher autonomy is difficult because we have to leave an easy way, which is
for example conducting a lesson on the basis of a course-book and to create something new
on our own. It is difficult and requires more effort (S19).
The comments made on external constraints relate mostly to institutions

(schools), on the one hand, as the major agents inhibiting autonomy but, on the
other, they are also seen as having the strongest power to facilitate the development
of teacher autonomy:
I think that in present situation that are many barriers that unable teachers to be totally
autonomous, for example pressure from the institution that makes teachers work under
constraints of time, large classes, syllabus or examination demands (S10).
School policy should allow teachers to develop and let teachers to participate in a decision
making process, because feeling of being needed and important is crucial not only for
teachers but all people. I think that a teacher should have an opportunity to discuss and
debate real school problems. Today speaking about school problems is a taboo, I am sure
this should be changed. Educational system should provide optimal level of support,
allowing teachers’ voice (S21).
5.2.6 Preservice Teachers on Their Autonomy
The subjects see the development of teacher autonomy as a necessary but longi-
tudinal process and emphasize the role of teaching experience in its development:
I think that novice teachers need time and experience in order to develop autonomy (S5).
Teacher autonomy should be developed carefully and should somehow be controlled by for
example by the trainee’s supervisor/mentor who as am more experienced teacher could give
preservice teacher some useful tips and advise them (S8).
When describing autonomy in the preservice context, trainees present very

diverse views. For some, it is the best time to develop their autonomy. For others,
the perception of their own inadequacies seems to make them reluctant to imple-
ment what they perceive to be dangerously beyond routine activities and therefore
untested as effective in classroom teaching. The first group of trainees were very
enthusiastic about being able to make their own choices and found it an enjoyable
experience:
First of all, teacher autonomy can be seen as a ‘blessing’ for preservice teachers, they can
choose course-books, time and pace the lessons themselves. However, some preservice
teachers are afraid of being autonomous. Making decisions or changing the course of the
lesson when something goes wrong, frightens them. (…) Teacher autonomy has its pros
and cons. It can be seen as a motivating factor but it can have a detrimental effect on
preservice teachers, as well (S13).
Preservice teachers still being students know how to expand their knowledge by choosing
ways of self-development. Furthermore, they can provide a good example for their students
by showing that constant self-improvement is always profitable and motivating, whether
you are still at school or you have already graduated and have a job (S3).
Preservice teachers have more opportunities to focus on self-directed teaching (S10).
Despite the totally positive attitude to teacher autonomy expressed in general

comments, in the preservice context, the trainees seem very careful about endorsing
the idea of being autonomous. Whereas one of the trainees believed that “Preservice
teachers have the right to be autonomous” (S13), another one confessed: “I am not
sure I have freedom” (S11). This skeptical or even negative attitude results from
both internal and external factors:
A preservice teacher has full rights to be autonomous, however it is often the case that s/he
is being checked and observed on a regular basis which is limiting very often his/her scope
of possibilities. Young teachers being equipped with all sorts of novel methods and tech-
niques have innovative ideas and concepts how a class should be conducted. Such inno-
vations do not always go along with routines to which experienced teachers are used. They
are often trying to impose their teaching style on a preservice teacher, not leaving him/her
much space for being creative or spontaneous. On the other hand, many ideas on how to
teach acquired during the studies need to be modified or adjusted and this is what only
experienced teachers know because of their experience. Unfortunately, this limits a pre-
service teacher’s sense of autonomy as their w willingness to try out things on their own is
put to a stop to some extent. I think it is important to let preservice teachers to make their
own mistakes and learn from them (S13).
When preservice teachers start teaching their autonomy is challenged. Very often they are
given the right to choose a course-book, which would be the best for the students. Even
though a teacher has to stick to the curriculum, they are free to use a teaching method of
their choice, they are given an opportunity to contribute to teaching by creating new
materials (S8).
5.3 Preservice Teachers on Teacher Autonomy: A Summary
The picture of preservice teachers and their perceptions of teacher autonomy that
appear in the study are quite positive. The trainees demonstrate full awareness of
what teacher autonomy involves. Their understanding of the concept relates to
autonomy as consisting in:
• a degree of independence in one’s classroom practices but at the same time
responsibility for one’s actions;
• awareness of oneself as a teacher and awareness of learners and their needs;
• flexibility in designing lessons, choice of materials and classroom management
but all this firmly grounded in professional competence deriving from knowl-
edge and experience;
• active involvement in professional development through reflection and experi-
mentation with new techniques, materials and procedures, verified in action
research projects carried out individually or cooperatively with colleagues;
• being mature and developing a unique individuality as a teacher.
An autonomous teacher is described as fully competent, motivated by having a
calling and a positive attitude to his or her students, which allows him or her to
facilitate the learning process by creating a favorable classroom atmosphere.
Certain personality features of a teacher make him or her more predisposed to
becoming autonomous in the eyes of the trainees. These mostly relate to teacher
affectivity and more precisely his or her self-esteem and self-confidence. Low
self-esteem and lack of confidence, together with inadequacies of professional
competence and experience, are seen by the trainees as major constraints on
development of their autonomy at the preservice stage. Additionally, external
factors such as their mentors’ or supervising teachers’ rigid control during the
period of school placement are seen by the trainees as limiting their readiness to be
more autonomous and act beyond what may be seen as routine and safe behavior in
their classroom practice. This, however, does not mean that they are not willing to
be more autonomous and do not find a certain degree of enjoyment when it is
allowed. It is believed that autonomy will come with experience and the teaching
conditions under which preservice teachers become in-service teachers. Thus, it is
seen as a longitudinal process that is somewhat ahead of them and not necessarily
starting at the preservice stage.
6 Conclusions
Creating facilitative conditions for preservice teachers’ autonomy and positive (but
constructive at the same time) feedback offered by mentors will allow these trainees
to feel more secure. As this lack of security is a governing factor, it causes reversion
to familiar tried-and-tested models of teaching, which may not be very stimulating
for either teachers or learners. This lack of stimulation could well result in a more
passive attitude to one’s development and harmful falling into routine at the start of
one’s professional life. Although initial attempts at autonomy or finding one’s own
ways in the classroom may result in failure and thus undermine the initially quite
idealistic picture of the teaching profession a preservice teacher holds, it is nec-
essary to make it clear that failure is part of future success. As stated earlier, trainees
focus on the technicalities of teaching (methods, techniques, etc.), but being
deprived of challenges to be creative and innovative might lead to being just a
skillful but unenthusiastic teacher, one who is resistant to change. This can result in
burn-out, as routine inevitably leads to it. Initial inspiration based on admiration for
model teachers will disappear and personal satisfaction from teaching will diminish.
What implications for us as teacher trainers does the picture of preservice
teachers as represented in this study have? First of all, the trainees’ emphasis on the
lack of teacher autonomy as a topic in their training program is a legitimate indi-
cation that it should be introduced and discussed together with some guidelines on
how to develop it, what advantages it offers to a teacher and how to cope with the
constraints and barriers a teacher faces in his or her attempt to be autonomous. Also,
in the preparation for teaching practice at school, trainees should be made aware of
what the scope and limitations of their autonomy as preservice teachers are. At the
same time, mentors and supervisors should see themselves as facilitators of pre-
service teacher autonomy by showing ways of developing autonomy and, more
importantly, of dealing with fear, feelings of low self-esteem and possible failure in
the trainee’s attempts to be independent. In other words, preparation for teacher
autonomy should have both cognitive and affective dimensions.
Unfortunately, what emerges very strongly from this study is the trainees’
declared belief that they have been limited in their attempts to become more
autonomous by their mentors and/or supervisors. Undoubtedly, the actions taken by
these mentors and supervisors have their own grounding, but what the comments in
this study show is that the feedback given to the trainees is neither very informative
nor encouraging. A preservice teacher, still a student himself or herself, needs a lot
of encouragement to go beyond the old established ways and try out new things in
his or her first encounters with a school and students in class. On a positive note,
what is important is that these trainees see teacher autonomy as an attribute of a
successful teacher and, as one of them said, teacher autonomy leads to development
of professional competence, which in turn makes a teacher an effective practitioner
in the classroom.
To conclude, it seems that the way we, teacher trainers and mentors, deal with
our trainees’ autonomy is either not encouraging enough (to say nothing of negative
responses to the trainees’ attempts to be autonomous) or the issue of trainees’
autonomy does not come up at all in the feedback we give to them. Thus, they more
often than not come to see teacher autonomy as irrelevant at this stage of their
professional development and it is only perceived at this time as an important
attribute later on in their professional careers. Of course, this not a very positive
picture is not always true, as I am sure that some of us do emphasize the role of
teacher autonomy and see induction to it at the preservice stage as obligatory, but as
the testimony of the subjects in this study suggests, this is often not the case. Thus,
as much as we emphasize learner autonomy, we should do the same with teacher
autonomy both in our training programs and in our school practice.
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Journal of Teacher Education, 27, 245–264.
Possible Selves and Student Teachers’
Autonomous Identity
Dorota Werbińska
Abstract Although numerous research studies have explored the concept of

learner autonomy, the synergy of autonomy, motivation and identity has received
scarce attention in language learning literature. This article aims to shed some light
on this issue by reporting the findings of a longitudinal four-year study which
sought to investigate autonomous behaviors of two English language student
teachers. The point of departure was the subjects’ future-oriented self-narratives, in
which they imagined their professional careers as language teachers, followed by
the author’s tracking of their autonomous behaviors through three research
instruments (logging ‘autonomous events’, analyzing their narratives of tension and
investigating interviews for the subjects’ I-statements, that is, their ‘autonomy’
language). The study seems to suggest that the anticipation of a person’s future,
derived from motivational functions of possible selves and recognized already at
the inception of studies, may influence the person’s future professional identity.
1 Introduction
Although autonomy has been the focus of intensive investigation for several years
now, it has been acknowledged recently that a convergent approach to researching
autonomy alongside motivation and identity—two other frequently explored con-
cepts—might provide a better understanding of the role they all play in the language
learning and teaching process than dealing with them separately (Gao & Lamb,
2011; Chik & Breidbach, 2011; Paiva, 2011). The need for the joint treatment of
these three constructs seems especially interesting in the case of investigating
autonomous behaviors of young adults who are still in the process of their identity
formation. Although naturally delimited by the course of personal history, shaping a
young person’s identity does not have to take place mechanically, through the
imitation of biological processes, but can involve conscious effort on the part of the
D. Werbińska (&)
Pomeranian Academy, Słupsk, Poland
e-mail: werbinsk@pro.onet.pl

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-07764-2_11
180 D. Werbińska
person concerned. This basic ‘drive’ can be provided by so-called temporal inte-
gration of the person’s past with the present, or even more, the present with the
future. In other words, such an approach to developing one’s identity assumes the
possession of prospective mindsets and the creation of future scenarios which
derive from motivational functions of future selves.
This article, therefore, aims to combine the three constructs by studying student
teachers’ autonomy, understood as agency in influencing their own identities
through implementing or not ideal-self motivation. The point of departure is
future-oriented self-narratives collected at the beginning of the subjects’ BA
studies, in which they imagine their professional careers as language teachers. The
study then focuses on searching examples of the subjects’ autonomy development
throughout the rest of their studies and well into the first year after completing
university education. All in all, the study seems to suggest that anticipation of the
future derived from motivational functions of possible selves may have a significant
influence on what really happens.
2 Motivation, Identity, and Autonomy
In language learning literature, motivation has been traditionally expressed in two

dichotomies. The first one, originated by Gardner and Lambert (1972), is motiva-
tion understood as integrative or instrumental orientation, where integrative ori-
entation stands for a desire to learn a language arising from a fascination with the
language, its culture and the target community, and instrumental motivation rep-
resents a desire to learn a language for a particular purpose. The other dichotomy is
the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (Ryan & Deci, 2000,
p. 55), sometimes referred to as inner motivation versus external motivation
(Hadfield, 2012, p. 4), where intrinsic motivation springs from a desire to learn a
language because the very experience of learning it generates pleasure and interest,
and extrinsic motivation is the result of an “external incentive, as distinct from the
wish to learn for its own sake or interest in tasks” (Ur, 1996, p. 277).
Taking the above four kinds of motivation into consideration, it can be easily
observed that only integrative motivation can be specific to language learning,
whereas the other three can apply to any other learning activity. However, inte-
grative motivation has become problematic recently, especially in light of
Yashima’s (2009) concept of international posture. According to her, in the period
of English being a global language, the notion of community is untenable. She
argues that “international posture is a valid construct that relates to motivation to
learn and willingness to communicate [WTC]” (p. 147). This means that integra-
tiveness as a primary motive to learn was only partly successful because “it did not
offer any obvious links with the new cognitive motivational concepts that had been
emerging in motivational psychology (…) and partly because the label ‘integrative’
was rather limiting and, quite frankly, did not make too much sense in many
language learning environments” (Dörnyei, 2009, p. 10).
Possible Selves and Student Teachers’ Autonomous Identity 181
Questioning the validity of integrativeness, new theories of motivation focused

on linking motivation with research on post-modern understanding of identity. The
key assumption helping understand them is that identity is a dynamic entity, prone
to intentional modification propelled by alternative representations of who a person
could be. In their description of identity, Augustinos, Walker, and Donaghue (2006)
claim that the “ability to picture oneself in a range of potential futures, to evaluate
these futures and to aspire towards realizing or avoiding them is a powerful force
guiding our behavior in and experience of the present” (p. 192). An authority on
identity in L2 literature, Norton (2000) defines it as “how a person understands his
or her relationship to the world, how that relationship is constructed across time and
space, and how the person understands possibilities for the future” (p. 4). Likewise,
Markus and Nurius’ (1986) future possible selves are individuals’ ideas of what
people could become, what they would like to become and what they are afraid of
becoming. Higgins (1987) develops the list adding what people would like to be
(the ideal self) and what people feel they should be (the ought-to self). These two
kinds of definitions in fact boil down to four possible future selves: the ideal self
(what people would like to become), the ought-to self (what people feel they should
become), the feared self (what people are afraid of becoming) and the default self
(what people could become if they do nothing to transform their future self into the
ideal self) (Hadfield, 2012, p. 5). Therefore, possible selves can stand for things that
an individual wishes, expects or fears, but because they are “vivid and personalized
representations of goals that have associated behavioral plans and strategies, they
form stronger motivators of behavior than more abstract, non-self-referential rep-
resentations of goals or values” (Augustinos et al., 2006, p. 193).
Inspired by possible selves theory, Dörnyei (2005, 2009) proposes a new
approach to the understanding of language learning motivation, the L2 motivational
self system, based on three components: the ideal L2 self, the ought-to L2 self, and
the L2 learning experience. The ideal L2 self is the most powerful imperative to
reduce the discrepancy between a person’s actual and ideal selves. The ought-to self
concerns the attributes that a person should possess so as to avoid possible negative
outcomes, and which may bear little resemblance to the person’s real wishes. The
L2 learning experience relates to situation-specific motives comprising the learner’s
immediate learning environment and experience. These three pillars progress from
wholly internal (the ideal L2 self), through first external and then possibly internal
(the ought-to L2 self), to wholly external (the L2 learning experience) motivation.
Since possible selves, understood as the learners’ personal images of themselves in
the future, are an object of investigation in this paper, we will confine ourselves to
the first two pillars only.
The construct of possible selves can be compared to Marcia’s (Brzezińska &
Appelt, 2004) concept of identity comprising exploration and commitment. The
former signifies the stage of looking for alternatives and experimenting with pos-
sibilities, whereas the latter stands for a person’s engagement, an outcome of
previous decisions or a consistent realization of established aims. The combination
of the two phases—exploration and commitment—has inspired Marcia to distin-
guish four identity statuses, out of which ‘achieved identity’ and ‘foreclosed
182 D. Werbińska
identity’ seem to somewhat correlate with two selves in Dörnyei’s motivational

construct. Achieved identity (resembling Ideal L2 Self) is characteristic of mature
individuals, resistant to other people’s pressures, not shunning challenges or having
problems with finding an answer to the question of who they are, because they have
already made an autonomous and conscious decision. If they have decided to
become teachers, they have made it on the basis of their competence or personal
preferences. In turn, foreclosed identity (resembling ought-to L2 self) is typical of
individuals who have not explored enough by themselves, and the choices con-
cerning their commitments are informed by strong external pressures. Such indi-
viduals are rather devoid of reflections on their careers or professional achievements
and, if they become teachers, this is usually a result of someone else’s persuasion.
Our third concept to be discussed here, autonomy, has been a preoccupation in
much of the SLA literature. A number of definitions on autonomy have been
proposed stressing different learner’s and teacher’s dimensions, such as taking
charge of learning (Dickinson, 1987; Holec, 1981; Little, 1991), parallel the process
of learner’s language development and teacher’s professional growth (Kohonen,
2001; Little, 1991), responsibility (Jimenez, Lamb, and Vieira 2007, p. 1), noticing
(van Lier, 1996, p. 11), self-regulation (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006), being reflective
(McGrath, 2000) and metacognitive awareness (Ellis, 2000). Martinez (2008,
p. 105) even argues that the notion of autonomy is difficult to grasp because it is a
‘semantic neologism’ whose old meanings relating to philosophical and educational
concepts overlap with new ones not sufficiently explored yet. Hard though the
notion of autonomy can be, in this study it is understood as the construct com-
prising; (1) a capacity for independent action, initiative taking, consistent devel-
opment of one’s motivation and intentionality, (2) a capacity for noticing the
complexity in the realization of the selected goal, and (3) a capacity for constructing
one’s identity through ‘autonomy oriented’ language. In other words, an autono-
mous person would be considered here as someone who on his or her own has
selected a goal to pursue, does his or her best to head in this direction, perceives
the complexity of this goal achievement, and uses reflective language when
describing his or her goal experiences. Such understanding of autonomy goes hand
in hand with possible selves in Dörnyei’s concept of motivation and Marcia’s
construct of commitment, or achieved identity in his description of identity statuses.
Moreover, possible selves can relate not only to the person’s future but also to
the present time in a twofold manner. On the one hand, the anticipation of the future
influences an individual’s present activity, which is that of his or her actual self,
and, on the other hand, it will transform in the future the possible ideal self into the
actual self, so it indirectly informs what will happen in the future. Therefore, it is
highly likely that possible future identity structure can be defined that provides a
description of what a person in the future will be like as well as what will assume a
central place in his or her life and what will be assigned to the background. In other
words, anticipating the future may have a significant influence on what may really
happen in the future, not as the result of self-fulfilling prophecies but deriving from
motivational functions of an individual’s vision of a possible self in the future.
Expectations connected with language learning, going abroad or choosing a job

may be reflected in the real course of changes in one’s identity.
3 The Research Study
3.1 Participants
Originally, 13 BA students of English philology with a teaching specialization were

asked to write a one-page narrative from the perspective of the actual self. In
particular, they were given the following instructions: Although you are a young
person and a greater part of life is still awaiting you, you can imagine your future.
Please write what your imagined professional life will be like after finishing your
studies. The purpose of this task was to find how many and which of the students,
already at the inception of their studies, identified with the language teaching
profession, their major specialization. The responses indicated that 8 students would
like to perform a life occupation different from teaching, 3 students found it difficult
to imagine themselves being an English teacher although they wrote that they might
become one and only 2 students explicitly wrote that they would like to be English
teachers, and that was why they had intentionally selected the teaching special-
ization. Having this knowledge of student future possible selves, the author began
her longitudinal study (2008–2012) on each subject, continuing up to the present,
which is one year after the students finished their studies, with a view to investi-
gating the changes in their mindsets regarding the language teaching profession.
For the sake of the present chapter, only two teachers are investigated: Weronika,
who has always wanted to be a teacher (representing the ideal L2 self), and Anna,
who has never considered language teaching as a future occupation in earnest and
began her studies due to her parents’ pressure (the ought-to L2 self).
3.2 Objectives
The specific research question to be pursued here was whether or not the temporal
future perspectives (in particular Ideal Self) generate autonomous behavior on the
part of the individual. Therefore, in line with the accepted definition of autonomy,
the author was motivated to find answers to three sub-questions:
1. Does the assumption of a possible future self affect the subjects’ activity as
reflected in higher exploration and engagement?
2. Does the assumption of a possible future self promote the subjects’ noticing of
higher complexity of their goal?
3. Does the assumption of a possible future self influence the subjects’ use of
‘autonomy’ language?
184 D. Werbińska
3.3 Instruments
Although the whole study employed a number of research tools, three instruments
are considered here: a logbook kept by the author for the whole period of the
subjects’ studies in which their ‘autonomous’ behaviors were recorded, the sub-
jects’ written narratives produced after their teaching practice at the end of the
second year of the study, and a lengthy three-hour interview conducted with each of
the subjects in their first year of working as a professional teacher. The purpose of
the researcher’s logbook was to register the activities initiated by the two subjects
aimed at better pursuing the ultimate teaching goal; the focus on the written
descriptions of their first teaching encounters was aimed at identifying their inde-
pendent noticing of complexity in teaching English educational settings; and the
interviews with the same, now novice in-service teachers, were conducted to pro-
vide material for the analysis of their language for autonomy. In a nutshell, the three
instruments aimed to provide answers to the three sub-questions specified above in
order to seek the response to the main question motivating this paper, whether
possible selves foster teacher learners’ autonomous behaviors.
3.4 Results and Discussion
This section describes the methods as well as the findings resulting from the three
modes of data collection, followed by a discussion. All of the methods were used to
keep track of the teacher learners’ autonomous behaviors.
3.4.1 Logbook
The logbook as an easy way to register the participants’ ‘interesting’ behaviors was
used by the author throughout the whole of the period of their BA studies. It was
found to be more useful than keeping a diary because mere recording of events took
less time, and yet enabled the researcher to keep track of experiences and devel-
opments on a regular basis as well as reflect later on the event registered. The
logbook consisted of the time period (Term) and examples of the subject’s behavior
(Events); the number of pluses indicates their intensity in the opinion of the
researcher, as illustrated in Table 1.
The question at the beginning of this paper was whether or not the motivated
language teacher learner (possible ideal L2 self) exhibited more autonomous
behaviors than the teacher learner who decided to study language teaching as a
result of external pressure (possible ought-to L2 self). Based on the results from
these case studies, the answer is definitely positive, because Weronika with the
possible ideal L2 teaching self demonstrated the development of autonomy, which
was hardly the case with the other participant. The first student seemed to take
Table 1 Examples of Weronika’s and Anna’s ‘autonomous’ behaviors over the course of their
BA studies
Term Events Weronika Anna
Term 1 Expressing the desire to become a language teacher and +++ –
changing to the teaching profile when she learnt she was
in a nonteaching group
All terms Being always prepared in advance for methodology ++ –
classes, seminar meetings
Term 3 Borrowing methodology books and reading them in her +++ –
free time
All terms Staying to talk to lecturers about subject matter issues ++ –
after classes
Terms 4, Frequent voluntary attendance at free-of-charge +++ +
5, 6 in-service teacher professional meetings in town
Term 4 Volunteering for conducting the display lessons ++ –
Term 5 Coming to the first seminar with a few topic proposals +++ –
Terms 5, 6 Working on the BA paper on a regular basis, no need for +++ –
pushing
Term 6 Being interested in her job prospects, visiting schools for +++ –
potential work opportunities in March on her own
initiative
Term 6 Reporting on group work findings in an in-service +++ ++
teacher meeting
Terms 4, Voicing less popular opinions during methodology and +++ +
5, 6 seminar classes, and standing up for her own viewpoints
Terms 4, Giving private lessons to primary and secondary school +++ –
5, 6 students
Terms 4, 5 Noticing “hidden curriculum” aspects in her own +++ +
primary and secondary classrooms, despite the fact that
earlier she had only praised her school teaching
Terms 2, Skillful ability to reflect on language education issues +++ +
3, 4, 5, 6
charge of her own learning when she lingered to chat with her teachers about an
English-language related issue, prepared meticulously for her classes or studied for
her diploma paper. She was also willing to take charge of her learning outside of
the college context, be it when she attended job update meetings for practicing
teachers and performed the role of a group reporter to the rest of the meeting
participants, when she found private tutees from different educational levels, or
even when she sent her CVs and visited schools as potential places of work well
before her graduation. Moreover, she displayed high self-esteem connected with the
teaching profession already at the start of her studies when she insisted on being
transferred to the teaching group, which indicated her motivation in regard to what
she wanted to do in the future and confirmed that she already possessed this
knowledge about herself. That conviction of ‘belonging’ in the teaching profession
186 D. Werbińska
must have influenced her decision to always volunteer to conduct display lessons as
well as helped her voice her opinions about different teaching issues, even though
they might have been less popular with her group mates.
By contrast, Anna hardly displayed autonomy-targeted behaviors. She also
attended a few in-service teacher meetings and reported on the group work, but
active participation on her part was not typical. Her comments in the assigned
narratives were less reflective than Weronika’s and she rarely engaged in activities
on her own initiative. In fact, even the topic, the structure and the literature con-
cerning her diploma paper were suggested to her by the supervisor, and she
completed it half a year beyond the due date. The other behaviors registered in the
logbook for the previous subject did not take place in the case of Anna.
3.4.2 Subjects’ Diaries
In accordance with our definition above, exercising autonomy can also refer to a
person’s ‘noticing’ as an aspect of critical and independent thinking. Noticing can
be propelled by enhanced consciousness derived from internal conflicts, or cog-
nitive and affective dissonance experienced by the individual. Autonomy in this
sense is the ability to question the encountered ideologies and events that are not
congruent with the person’s system of values, rather than reproduce them or accept
passively. In other words, autonomy is “the ability to live with initial cognitive
dissonance and conflicts [that are] one of the leading edges of resistance and
change” (Gee, 2005, p. 179).
The data for examining the participants’ ability to ‘notice’ were their narratives
written during their teaching practice. Each subject kept two diaries: one during the
whole of term 4 when they observed the school teacher and other students con-
ducting English lessons, and the other during a one-month internship when they
were teachers themselves in the primary schools (Weronika had teaching practice in
a large county town, whereas Anna taught in a small village school). Altogether,
Weronika wrote 12 diary entries (33 pages) in the first diary and 15 (51 pages) in
the second one. By contrast, Anna wrote 15 entries (15.5 pages) during the whole
term and 16 (15 pages) during the practicum month. Yet, it cannot be assumed that
the number of texts matched their corpus size or semantic content.
In order to investigate the ‘noticing’ dimension in the diaries, the researcher
turned towards tensions intimated by the diarists, the teacher learners’ questioning
of the traditionally established order or their lack of acceptance of something if they
were convinced of truth lying somewhere else. For the sake of simplicity, the
selected narratives providing the research material in the diaries were called nar-
ratives of tension. The categories in the narratives of tension were created after
detailed examination of the data and consideration of the research focus in which
the subjects’ ‘noticing’ was treated as a sign of autonomy. In particular, the fol-
lowing steps were taken, as suggested by Alsup (2006):
• reading the diary entries once and underlining interesting ideas;

• reading the diary entries a second time, again marking interesting ideas, and
combining the ideas that seemed similar to one another;
• constant comparing of the emerging themes;
• suggesting a final list of themes; and
• asking a friendly researcher to review a sample of the data (10 %) and verify the
names of the categories.
During qualitative analysis, the ‘noticing’ aspect of autonomy was identified in
three types of the participants’ narratives, respectively called student-teacher ten-
sions, personal-institutional tensions and theory-practice tensions. Student-teacher
tensions refer to the teacher learner’s greater identification with a student’s plight or
a teacher’s role, personal-institutional tensions concern the lack of accord between
the subjects’ personal opinions and convictions and what they encounter in the
school practice, and theory-practice tensions related to disagreements between what
they learnt at university that was not reflected in the school reality. It is claimed that
the more occurrences of narratives of tensions the participants exhibit, the more
‘noticing’ they exercise and, in turn, the more autonomous dispositions they
represent.
Altogether, Weronika produced 23 narratives of tension in the first diary, and 21
in the second one, giving a total of 44. By contrast, Anna’s narratives of tension
from the first diary amounted to 11 texts, and those from the second diary equaled
8, for a total of 19. The types and the numbers of narratives written by each student
are shown in Table 2. A quick glance at the data is sufficient to see that Weronika,
considered a very motivated teacher learner in the study, came up with twice as
many narratives of tension as Anna. Yet, on analyzing her texts, the inclinations
towards autonomous behaviors in our understanding of the concept cannot be
determined solely by the quantity of texts. What other evidence, then, exists for her
critical awareness?
What strikes the reader of Weronika’s entries is her looking for reasons behind
the described conflictual events. When she expresses the ineffectiveness of a lesson,
she explains why it is so and how it could be changed, and when she criticizes the
system of teaching used by the regular teacher, she also points to what should be
changed, for example, the supremacy of grammar or lack of living language speech.
This is what she writes about one of the teachers during her mid-term practice:
Table 2 Subjects’ narratives Narratives of tension Weronika Anna Totals

of tension in their two diaries
Student-teacher 8 (2 + 6) 3 (2 + 1) 11
Personal-institutional 22 (13 + 9) 10 (7 + 3) 32
Theory-practice 14 (8 + 6) 6 (2 + 4) 20
Totals 44 (23 + 21) 19 (11 + 8) 63
188 D. Werbińska
Her way of conducting lessons has nothing to do with communication. This is sad because
Miss Maria seems to be a very open person to new techniques and ‘methodological
fashions’, and rejects the trend that has been present in English language teaching for a
good many years. The children seem to have a great potential but, unfortunately, it is still
underexploited.
It seems that Weronika is struck by the absence of teacher’s congruence, logi-

cality or a steady progression towards the ultimate aim, which is the learners’
communicative competence. Looking for causes may testify to her familiarity with
analyzing a problem, the interpretation of a situation found and striving for
objectivity, all of which might have had an effect on her own goal selection and
realization.
Another interesting fact is Weronika’s high self-confidence about her own lan-
guage teaching, probably springing from her sense of connection to the profession,
as well as positive interaction with and feedback from the learners, which were
clear from a variety of her diary entries. She never felt stressed while introducing
teaching techniques; quite the reverse—she always believed in the sense of what
she did. Even when misinformation from the school mentor led her to introduce the
very same exercises which the mentor had used herself, when the learners informed
her that they had already completed those exercises with their regular teacher,
Weronika was not in the least embarrassed. Instead, she was able to exhibit her
resourcefulness and cope with that unpredictable situation so skillfully that no one
even noticed the school teacher’s mistake. In fact, the greatest number of her
narratives of tension boil down to discrepancies between her own convictions and
vision of the English teacher’s job and institutional realities, such as the necessity to
follow course books, scarce use of English in the classroom, and the predominance
of grammar and writing at the expense of oral skills. Interestingly, her narratives of
tension never concern problems with discipline, a common complaint of novice
teachers.
A number of entries point to Weronika’s sense of responsibility, without which
autonomy is hardly possible. Coming to her lessons unprepared without having
considered the aim beforehand is inconceivable to her. She simply states that she
owes it to her students to prepare for lessons and teach them as best she can but
when the unexpected comes she will have to manage. She cannot understand that
her school mentor never takes coursebooks home or has no idea what she will be
doing the following day in the classroom. Such an attitude certainly shows how
responsible a teacher Weronika is. In the conclusion to her diary she wrote:
At the beginning of the teaching practice I promised myself that I would check if the
learners would like me as a nice and demanding teacher. I was pleasantly surprised because
none of them mentioned that they had been lagging behind or had had problems with
understanding. It is extremely important for me because I had always wondered if students
really liked being forced to work.
Her responsibility for teaching is also demonstrated through the possession of

some personal theories, such as: “In my classes everybody must work”, “Even
though the teacher must sometimes give several identical lessons, already after two
such classes it is easy to perceive minuses and try to change them another time.
I have promised myself to practice this”, “Dividing the alphabet into three letters
covered in one lesson is a waste of time. This only confirms my belief that fol-
lowing the course book in a rigid way is absurd”. Her statements prove that she
gives thought to educational issues and creates her own credos to abide by, which
again speaks to her personal goal-setting and its consistent realization.
One of the hallmarks of an autonomous language teacher is promoting autonomy
in her students. Analyzing Weronika’s narratives, the researcher can find a great
number of episodes in which the diarist describes her attempts to foster autonomy in
the language classroom. One example is cited below:
Today I was unobserved because the teacher was ill. During the lesson in class 5 I wanted
the learners to learn English more consciously. I paid attention to learning aims and
advantages coming from this knowledge. I wanted them to correctly pronounce new words
and structures. I also gave them ‘a free hand’ – when describing pictures, they were allowed
to decide what to talk about. Frankly speaking, I was a bit afraid of how they would
respond to such a lesson. I was mistaken. They willingly and creatively described the
pictures and worked successfully in groups, controlling and correcting one another, of
course within their capabilities. During the lesson in class 2 I introduced new words: chair,
bag, floor. First, showing the pictures, I practiced the pronunciation and then, a fluffy
elephant helped me with the next exercise. I repeated the question “Where is Dumbo?” and
the children learnt it. The I put the teddy on the window sill, saying the phrase “on the
window sill”. After a few minutes I stepped aside and the children themselves asked
questions, putting the teddy in different places and choosing the person to give answers.
I liked the lesson very much. I also noticed that they like pretending to be teachers asking
their classmates, checking the correctness of responses and correcting if need be. I wonder
what Mrs. U would say if she was present at the lesson.
The two lessons from Weronika’s diary entry refer to two stages of autonomy
introduction, as suggested by Scharle and Szabo (2000): raising awareness of
autonomy and role reversal. The student teacher demonstrated that introducing
autonomy to students was a characteristic feature of her preparation for lessons.
Such a conclusion can be drawn because the choice of autonomy-oriented exercises
was made when she was not observed and was allowed to choose the most
‘comfortable’ mode of teaching for herself. Yet the tension was still present when
she expressed her anxiety about the students’ acceptance of the lesson or the absent
teacher’s disapproval.
Since the second method of data collection has made Weronika emerge as a
person with autonomous inclinations, the ‘autonomy qualities’ identified in her
narratives of tension served as points of reference for comparing Weronika to Anna,
who was unwilling to pursue a teaching career. Therefore, the examples of the
ability to analyze the problem, high self-confidence with regard to teaching,
responsibility and the attempts to implement autonomy during the internships were
sought after in Anna’s narratives of tension.
In most cases, in the narratives presented by Anna not too much analysis was
employed. The extracts were rather short and most of them were written in the
category of activities, as in: “I gave my first lesson. It was in the first class. At first I
was very stressed but it is over now…”. In comparison to the other student, she
190 D. Werbińska
described far fewer problems, and rather failed to accommodate causes or possible
alternative interpretations, although the conclusions were usually there. Clearly, she
seemed less open than the other student, which found its expression in her diaries.
As reserved as she seems, Anna cannot be called a self-confident person, either. Her
narratives were rich in the descriptions of internal tensions concerning discipline
problems, the unpleasant necessity of preparing documentation, lack of motivation
on the part of students and her own tiredness. She referred to consulting on the
problems with other colleagues, and even mentioned another teacher’s intervention
during one of her problems with classroom discipline. Such incidents can testify to
her responsibility (seeking advice in others) as well as teaching helplessness.
Interestingly, her diary entries frequently oscillate around other people than herself,
which makes her narratives more allocentric than idiocentric, in which the narrator
is the main object of narration (Trzebiński, 2002, p. 61). On several occasions, she
wrote about the lack of teacher authority, but she seemed to believe that authority
can be simply compelled on the account of the job held, rather than earned (“Even
though students don’t mind the teacher any longer, it is good that at least parents
respect teachers and reckon with their opinions”). In fact, she did not write much
about the techniques used during the lessons, so it can hardly be said that she
attempted to foster autonomy in her classroom in any way. All these diary findings
seem to point to Anna’s low level of agency in the choice of her activities, lack of
including her own values in the choices and decisions, and, paradoxically, through
writing more about others than herself, a greater sense of alienation in social
interactions.
To conclude, it can be said that the incidence of autonomy behaviors can be well
seen in the first student teacher but not in the second one. The qualities generated
from the narrative excerpts of the candidate motivated for teaching well attest to her
pro-autonomy proclivities because the tensions in her narratives can be called
autonomy-enabling experiences. This means that the episodes selected by her for
the descriptions show the teacher learner as a person who possesses analytical
skills, who believes in her success, who feels responsible for her decisions and who
tries to make her students depend more on themselves. The other student, who was
made to study teaching, exhibited almost none of the selected qualities. She found it
difficult to analyze her teaching behavior, felt stressed and helpless as a pedagogue,
and seemed to rely more on the traditional role of a teacher as a person respected by
others, teaching from the book and perceiving classroom discipline as a guarantee
for her pedagogical success. The tensions produced in the narratives by that student,
who was originally labelled as an ought-to self person can be called
autonomy-disabling experiences. This is so because the tensions she experienced in
no way made her find herself further on the path to autonomy.
3.4.3 Interviews
The third method of investigating growth in autonomy was I-statement analysis of

the subjects’ reflective speaking. The method of I-statement analysis examines how
people describe their actions speaking or writing in the first person and, via lan-
guage, construct their situated identities (Gee, 2005, p. 141; Ushioda, 2010, p. 46).
I-statements are categorized on the basis of predicates occurring after them.
Therefore, according to Gee (2005, pp. 141–142), we can have cognitive statements
(“I think…, I know…”), affective statements (“I like…, I hate…”), state versus
action statements (“I am responsible, I opened the book”), ability versus constraint
statements (“I can…, I shouldn’t…”), achievement statements (“This is my ambi-
tion”.). Gee claims that they were not distinguished by chance but emerged from the
consideration of his research data and study focus.
The material for investigation was gathered during a lengthy interview with each
of the subjects several months after finishing their BA studies. At the time of the
interviews, both subjects were employed as first year teachers teaching in primary
schools in the places where almost two years before they had served their teaching
practice. Weronika was working in a big school in a large county town, whereas
Anna was working in a small rural school where she was the only English teacher.
The research aim now was to triangulate the previous data with the use of yet
another method and check the developments in autonomy in the same two subjects
after a lapse of time and their change of occupational status. In other words, the
researcher was keen to find out whether the person with ideal-self motivation for
language teaching had changed her preferences, whether she still exhibited
autonomy-oriented behaviors and whether her identity was pro-autonomy. On the
other hand, it was of equal interest to examine whether the subject of ought-to self
motivation for teaching had changed in any way in the context of her performed
profession and whether any signs of autonomy would be displayed in her language
now. The procedures adopted in collecting the data were as follows:
• inviting the subjects (now teachers) to a recorded interview about their work as
full-time teachers;
• transcribing the conversations on the same day of the interviews;
• reading the data several times considering the research focus;
• identifying I-statements in the corpus;
• examining predicates for each I-statement and identifying emerging patterns;
• reducing the corpus to broader categories; and
• defining categories with the consideration of the research focus.
As a result, seven categories were distinguished which appeared to apply to all
the dataset. Table 3 presents the categories with sample examples and the number
of their occurrences in the case of each participant. It transpires from the data that
the number of I-statements used by the participants in the corpus wa comparable.
Yet, according to Gee (2005, p. 143; Ushioda, 2010, p. 53), numerical analysis
should only provide a rough guide, and it is the meaning of the statements them-
selves which is more significant. Let us consider the most important findings.
The first glance at all categories shows that there exist differences between the
two subjects. Weronika had far more I-statements in the Thoughts, beliefs category
than Anna and they predominantly refer to her personal philosophies of teaching
192 D. Werbińska
Table 3 I-statements categories

I-statement category (with examples from each Weronika’s no. Anna’s no. of
participant) of I-statements I-statements
(% frequency) (% frequency)
Thoughts, beliefs 20 (18.51) 8 (7.27)
I know that even if I don’t like some people, I have to
co-operate with them, obstacles must be overcome
I think you should do something well enough so as not
to need to revise it afterwards
Wishes, feelings, likes, dislikes 17 (15.74) 43 (39.09)
I like when things are done my way
I wish I were more confident and consistent in what I
do
Characteristic features 7 (6.48) 14 (12.72)
I am a very determined person, which helps me at
work. I know that even if I don’t like some people, I
have to co-operate with them, obstacles must be
overcome
I would never hurt a person
Actions 31 (48.00) 10 (9.09)
I made an English exhibition and a performance for
parents, I always engage myself
After no teacher wanted to organize a school trip, I
went to another school, asked the principal there and
organized a trip
Abilities, internal orders 13 (88.00) 6 (5.45)
I can work 47 h a week and I can manage everything
well
I can’t be consistent. I must change it
Constraints 7 (40.00) 14 (12.72)
The only problem for me is the fact that I have to fight
for my job (no vacancies next year)
I can’t change pupils’ previous learning habits.
I usually give up
Ideas, suggestions 7 (6.48) 1 (0.90)
I must be crafty. I suggested to my principal the idea of
creating bilingual classes in order to recruit more
pupils
Being able to watch lessons conducted with my pupils
by other teachers would be very useful for novice
teachers
Total 108 110
English. Their number also indicates how much confidence she feels about her
teaching language knowledge and skills as well as her individuality. Examples
include such statements as “I think a teacher should be a conscious and
methodologically well informed person” or “Working alone in my case is more

effective—then I am more proud of myself”.
The second category, Wishes, feelings, likes, dislikes, reveals that the other
subject gave more responses. However, it must be said that Anna’s statements were
mostly wishful (“I wish I was…”, “This is my aim…”) in which she expressed the
image of her future. Anna gave a precise picture of the teacher she is striving to be:
consistent, orderly, meticulous, disciplined and executing the principal’s orders, all
signs for her of responsibility. In fact, she repeats these ideas a number of times,
which indicates that she has thought about them before. On the one hand, such an
approach to teaching may show that Anna still has to be directed by other people
whose instructions she fulfils, continuing the ought-to self. On the other hand, she
may be in the process of developing her own teaching style, and being guided by
others (school superiors) is her choice.
An interesting aspect of another category referring to what the participants are
like is that most of Weronika’s I-statements present positive adjectives about her.
Anna seems to be more anxious in this respect. Not only does she say what she
lacks, but when she talks about her virtues, they are presented with respect to other
people: “I am good at listening to others”, “I can see who needs more support”, and
so on.
The category of Actions is dominated by Weronika. When she enumerated all
the activities in which she engages at school, often of her own accord, the
researcher was really amazed. Considered in this study as the prototype of an
autonomous person, she is first of all a very active individual. Whenever she is
infected with an idea which might be of benefit to her, she implements it and carries
it out until she thinks she has achieved her standards and can become engaged in
something else. It also means that she has not changed in this respect from the times
when she was a BA student. Since the concept of autonomy requires the possession
of a great many abilities (i.e., ability to manage learning, ability to self-assess, etc.),
the awareness of the possession of them is expressed in many statements by
Weronika, and half as often by Anna.
The Constraints that the teachers perceive are also different. The first participant
finds obstacles in the school environment but, interestingly, comes up with helpful
strategies to minimize them. On the other hand, Anna’s constraints are, as she says,
inside her. She is angry with herself that she does not have enough courage to voice
her opinions, refuse to agree to her colleagues’ constant requests or gives up
because of lack of confidence. It must be added though that she was proud of her
decision when she asked another school to help her with organizing a trip. It may
signify her fledgling autonomy, just like her awareness of what teaching goal she
should follow.
All in all, it can be said that Weronika still exhibits many features typical of
autonomous individuals. Her ideal-self motivation or striving for achieved identity
has not lost its substance or decreased in any way. Analyzing her job behaviors, it
can be said that she is still extremely active, resourceful, convinced of her
methodological skillfulness and, above all, self-confident. By contrast, Anna, who
has also started teaching and thinking about teaching in terms of her permanent
194 D. Werbińska
occupation, prefers to be guided and controlled by others. At the same time, she is
conscious of her teaching weaknesses, has attempted to reflect on her teaching style
and now knows what style she would like to represent. Clearly, the messy orga-
nization at her school may have triggered her hidden sense of responsibility and
desire for change. Empathetic and sensitive to others, she perceives all the ills of the
school she is working in and its deleterious influence on the pupils. Hence, her
ought-to self motivation for teaching may have merged or transferred into ideal-self
motivation because she knows the ideal she would like to strive for as a teacher. By
the same token, foreclosed or nominated identity that in the first place is dictated by
external pressures can become achieved identity, also echoing Maslov’s sense of
fulfilment, which in turn may lead to greater autonomy.
4 Conclusions
This article has aimed at tracking traces of autonomy in two teacher learners, basing
on the personal selves discovered at the very beginning of their studies. With the
use of three research tools, the author has sought to discover whether, above all,
ideal L2-self motivation for becoming a language teacher will generate more
autonomous mind sets and continue to last into the working period and produce the
teacher’s achieved identity. Analogously, the researcher wanted to check whether
ought-to L2 self motivation, diagnosed in the first year of language teaching studies,
is accompanied by fewer autonomous manifestations on the part of the subject and
will turn into the teacher’s foreclosed identity once she starts performing her pro-
fession. The provisional conclusions are positive; moreover, there are even some
intimations in the case of the second participant that foreclosed identity may
become achieved identity, as shown by her declarations, desire to remain a school
teacher, and even fledgling autonomy manifested in some of her decisions as well
as increased consciousness related to her vision of an English teacher. It can be
inferred, therefore, that in some individuals opting for a teaching career there might
be a progression from the external to the internal, and what we think we should
become turns into what we think we want to become; that is, the teacher’s ought-to
L2 self motivation transfers into the teacher’s ideal L2 self motivation, and the
teacher’s foreclosed identity into the teacher’s achieved identity.
The results of the study should be treated with caution as more research needs to
be conducted on this issue, possibly with the use of more instruments of a different
kind. Yet, it can hardly be denied that the investigation of possible selves and their
influence on other constructs, be it teacher autonomy or teacher identity, or still
other aspects of the teaching profession, can offer new vistas. They can provide new
interpretations of life events realized in goal-orientation, enhanced exploration and
activity, which can, in turn, lead to changes in identity. Likewise, a sense of aim,
direction and unity as well as optimism and belief in success strengthens a person’s
actual self. Giddens (2007) claims that identity is not presented to us once and for
all but is constructed, negotiated and generated by us through the life events we
experience and integrate into a coherent life story. Perhaps the ‘imposed’ early
diagnosis of future personal selves in would-be teachers and offering support in
translating this ‘theory’ into practice, simultaneously keeping track of teachers’
autonomous mind sets, might be helpful in generating more future teacher learners’
identities which are in fact achieved.
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Linguistic Autonomy with Recourse
to the Concept of Critical Language
Awareness: A Practical Proposal
for Evaluating Students’ Political
Autonomy in Foreign Language Learning
Hadrian Lankiewicz
Abstract Benson (1997) differentiated between three versions of autonomy—

technical, psychological and political—suggesting that the latter entails an amount
of language awareness leading to control over language use to obtain desired social
effects. Thus, the concept of political autonomy accentuates a high level of critical
language awareness requiring a good command of language and direct personal
control in terms of communicating the linguistic self. Assuming that this version
presents the top level of control (not necessarily identical with linguistic accuracy
and grammatical correctness) over language, the author of this paper proposes a
practical tool for developing students’ Critical Language Awareness (CLA), per-
ceived as a component of political autonomy in language learning. Bearing in mind
all the reservations pertaining to the possibilities of measuring students’ autonomy
in language learning (see, e.g., Benson, 2010), including the political bias inscribed
in CLA (any analysis is tinted with convictions of the analyzer), the author resorts
to the use of self-assessment and evaluation techniques (see Tassinari, 2012) as well
as reflection aimed at raising students’ linguistic awareness to facilitate their
political autonomy in language learning.
1 Introduction
Despite the fact that modern teaching practice is supported with a multitude of
educational resources, promoting the control of the student over a second language
(L2; the term is used interchangeably with English as a foreign language, EFL)
learning process seems to be unsatisfactory. Extreme voices question the feasibility
of the concept at lower educational levels, drawing their judgments from the sit-
uation in institutions training professional users of foreign languages, such as
H. Lankiewicz (&)
University of Gdańsk, Gdańsk, Poland
e-mail: hadrianlank@interia.pl

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-07764-2_12
198 H. Lankiewicz
potential teachers or interpreters. Partly agreeing with basic criticism, the author of
the present paper, however, points to a noticeable success in linguistic education,
for example, in Poland. The 2012 UEFA European Football Championship was an
occasion to prove that Polish people speak foreign languages. If one assumes that
autonomy has inspired language education for almost half a century, part of the
success must be ascribed to it. A low level of professional linguistic education
might lie elsewhere, for example, in the shift of educational preferences or a radical
change in the perception of linguistic norms, which, ironically, may be interpreted
as a sign of students’ high level of critical linguistic awareness.
The author of this paper shares the belief of Benson and Voller (1997, p. 11) that
there is no way out of autonomy in modern education and he accepts the challenge
verbalized by them to reevaluate the theoretical assumptions behind the concept.
Hence, Critical Language Awareness (CLA) is proposed as a platform shaping
students’ process of autonomous language learning and, ultimately, developing
their linguistic autonomy. Drawing on sociocultural theories, the concept of CLA
and his own reflective teaching experience, the author presents a practical proposal
in the form of a checklist and a situational survey aimed at both evaluating and
developing students’ political autonomy in L2 learning. This double objective is
inspired by differentiation between autonomy and autonomization. Little (2012)
makes a clear distinction between the two notions: “It is sometimes assumed that
the central research question to be answered is: ‘Does learner autonomy work?’ But
this is to confuse ‘autonomy’, which works by definition, with attempts at ‘au-
tonomization’, which can take many different forms and may or may not succeed”.
With this remark, he makes a clear distinction between the pedagogical dimension
of developing autonomy (autonomization) and the psychological disposition of the
learner (autonomy). Analogically, referring to the title of the paper, the term lin-
guistic autonomy is intended as the capacity for independent dealing with language,
with the scope of the paper narrowing it down to CLA issues. This skill is to show
up in learners’ linguistic behavior and, possibly, be somehow evaluated as the result
of critical language awareness. Yet, the same measuring instrument aims at
awareness-raising and might contribute to the autonomization of foreign language
learning.
2 Political Autonomy and Language Learning
The concept of political autonomy was articulated by Benson’s (1997) seminal

article “The philosophy and politics of learner autonomy”, in which he presented
three basic versions of autonomy in a hierarchical order of difficulty starting from
technical, through the psychological, to the summit of political control over lan-
guage and its learning. By presenting the perception of knowledge as the result of
learning, and language as a more or less accurate representation of knowledge,
Linguistic Autonomy with Recourse to the Concept … 199
Benson, in fact, accentuates a close correspondence between the perception of

language and its learning, which is of vital importance in this paper. Different
versions of autonomy result from the combination of language theories and the
understanding of the process of language learning.
Technical autonomy correlates with a positivist, Newtonian perception of
knowledge communicated in a language which transparently reflects the process of
thinking. Language, being the means of learning and the final end in the case of an
L2 classroom, is viewed as a cultural monolith, passed down from generation to
generation (Saussure, 1907/1983) to be mastered to express the meanings pervading
the target language community. The space for autonomy in L2 learning is restricted
to the ways of learning this objective reality of language (e.g., learning strategies);
however, the language itself is of a paradigmatic nature.
Psychological autonomy, relying on the constructivist perception of knowledge
as a result of personal creations, redefines the notion of language itself. Language is
seen as a ‘social artifact’ shaping knowledge and the perception of the world. In L2
learning this would stand for authentic language learning according to students’
interests. In this version learning takes over teaching, with students making deci-
sions regarding the control over content, cognitive processes and learning
management.
Benson derives the political version of autonomy from the post-Marxist critical
theory, perceiving knowledge as a construct vibrating with social tensions. Both
knowledge and the act of learning are conditioned by their context and reflection on
political power according to the maxim “power is knowledge” (Benson, 1997,
p. 22). Language, in which knowledge is expressed, is also the result of discursive
practices laden with ideological burden which shape it. In this view, „autonomy
grows as learners become more critically aware of the social context of their
learning and constrains it implies, the contingency of what is presented to them as
the ‘target language’, and the potential for social change implicit in language
learning” (Benson, 1997, p. 22).
This highest level of autonomy perceives the learner as a user of language aware
of its sociopolitical load, possessing power over it, creating language to suit his or
her own needs and purposes as well as being aware of the fact that any learning or
use of language means is engaging in the political act. The political nature of
language learning incorporates the idea of linguistic imperialism and culturally
invasive nature of language education (Pennycook, 1994), or problematization of
autonomy as a universal predisposition, and viewing it as exportation of Western
values (Riley, 1988). The theoretical and practical dimension of political autonomy
draws heavily on the achievements of critical discourse analysis, critical language
awareness, critical pedagogy and recent achievements of ecological linguistics or,
in particular, critical ecological linguistics. All of them aimed at empowering the
language user, and the learner, by making him or her more aware of the ideological
potential embedded in language, be it native or foreign.
200 H. Lankiewicz
3 Critical Language Awareness and Critical Pedagogy
The still dominant communicative approach in foreign language teaching under-

scores the functional dimension of language as a means of realizing the desired
goals through the process of negotiating meaning, roughly defined as communi-
cation. In its due time the functional approach to language teaching was a true
remedy for grammar-oriented structural perception of language and accompanying
pedagogical practices. Language, however, is rarely a neutral means for sharing
information. It is also a way of influencing people’s perceptions of social phe-
nomena. In fact, it is a means of controlling people. On the other hand, through
naive and sincere use of language, not to say it in a derogatory way, people
unconsciously communicate their own identities, unintentionally disclosing their
own narratives of life, as propounded by van Lier (2004), or manifest the style, a
crucial term in critical discourse analysis, defined as “language used for a particular
category of people and closely linked to their identity” (Chouliaraki & Fairclough,
1999, p. 63). Thus, in recent years, second language education in general and
foreign language education in particular developed a more thoughtful approach to
language, termed as critical language awareness, with the aim of making students
conscious language users, more immune to manipulation. In the educational setting,
this critical approach to ideological indoctrination embedded in school practices,
realized mostly through linguistic measures, received a concurrent equivalent in the
form of critical pedagogy.
3.1 Critical Language Awareness
While language awareness (LA) may refer to L1 and L2 respectively, CLA seems
to be of a more transversal nature, as highlighting the social construction of lan-
guage, the result of discursive practices and, thus, transferable across languages.
CLA is undoubtedly an outgrowth of LA. Carter (2003, p. 64) defines the term as
“development in learners of an enhanced consciousness of and sensitivity to the
forms and functions of language”. He underscores the fact that this approach was
developed in the field of language education, pertaining both to the mother-tongue
education as well as L2 teaching. Professional literature relates the notion of lan-
guage awareness to the term knowledge about language (KAL) (see Andrews,
2008, p. 287). Whether the notions are fully synonymous or not, they “share a
common assumption that there is a link between knowledge of formal aspects of
language and performance when using that language (L1 or L2), and that therefore
fostering learners’ ability to analyze and describe a language accurately is likely to
help them become more effective users of that language” (Andrews, 2008, p. 288).
Although language awareness has a long American and British tradition, basi-
cally, it is associated with new trends in linguistics and language education which
emerged in the 1980s “with reaction to those more prescriptive approaches to
language learning which were generally typified by atomistic analysis of language,

and reinforced by narrowly formalistic methodologies, such as grammar translation,
drills, and patterns practice” (Carter, 2003, p. 64). The educational dimension of
language awareness was surely propelled by the school of discourse analysis,
shifting attention to the neglected elements of language and reaching out beyond the
grammar-level of a sentence. Thus, in short, discourse analysis began to examine
the stretches of language “considered in full textual, social, and psychological
contexts” (Cook, 1989, p. ix) and how they “become meaningful and unified for
their users” (Cook, 1989, p. ix), perceiving discourse as “a form of social practice”
(Fairclough, 1989, p. 3).
L2 learning translated new achievements into communicative methodologies,
accentuating the importance of meaningfulness, and the functional aspects of the
linguistic reality, giving them priority over formalistic grammar. The impetus from
the sociocultural approach substituted the traditional goal of L2 education, identi-
fied with language proficiency, with communicative effectiveness and social
appropriateness (Snow, 2005, pp. 495–496). This new, more holistic, approach to
language, found its natural extension in critical language awareness or critical
linguistics, presenting “the view that language is not neutral, but is always part of a
wider social struggle underlining the importance for learners of exploring the ways
in which language can both conceal and reveal the social and ideological nature of
all texts” (Fairclough, 1992, cited in Carter, 2003). Farias (2005, p. 213) empha-
sizes an individual character of LA as based on personal perception and experience.
This might indicate a very idiosyncratic feature of LA as a result of intersubjective
facts, feelings and opinions. Farias (2005, p. 214) offers a very insightful inter-
pretation of LA, suggesting that it is “ultimately built on a foundation of under-
standing how we function as human beings, and a conception of human experience
as a universal experience that is expressed by language, whatever that language
might be, and whatever our relation to that language might be”. Thereby, LA,
similarly to CLA, possesses some universal character, meaning that the knowledge
of certain linguistic features or conversational properties in one language may result
in higher awareness while encountering any other language.
At a certain point LA simply becomes CLA, encompassing aspects reaching
beyond formal properties of language (i.e., grammar, lexis or structural discourse)
into the domain of social practice, meaning the “consideration of language as
critical practice, involving self-consciousness, and as socially enacted, engaged
with others (…)” (Farias, 2005, p. 215). CLA might be perceived as a direct
outgrowth of critical discourse analysis (CDA) aimed to reveal the connection
between language use, power and ideology, as exemplified by the works of
Bolinger (1990), Bourdieu (1991) or Fairclough (1989/1995). In foreign language
education, CLA strongly pertains to the concept of intercultural communicative
competence, as it involves relating sociocultural properties of a new language to the
mother tongue. Additionally, learner language is a form of manifestation of stu-
dents’ identity through their interlanguage or a style typical of school social
practice. Maftoon and Sabbaghan (2010), researching the development of students’
CLA through writing journals, maintain that “[i]f students are able to identify the
202 H. Lankiewicz
elements of order of discourse, they will be able to critically analyze linguistic

actions and interactions. This will increase their ability to look at language criti-
cally, which, in turn, increases critical language awareness” (p. 816). Similarly, it
will surely contribute to their linguistic autonomy, with respect to its political
dimension, making them sensitive users of discursive practices and remain inocu-
lated against any form of manipulation.
Concomitant with the idea of language awareness is the concept of teacher
language awareness, which, as Andrews (2008) points out, corresponded with the
“expansion of the EFL industry from the mid-1970s onwards” (p. 288). It holds the
assumption that knowledge about language results in more aware pedagogical
practices regarding language. Up till now, teacher language awareness (loosely
defined, with no unifying conceptual framework) concentrates mostly on teacher
practices with regard to grammatical, lexical or phonological awareness (cf.
Andrews, 2008). However, some others (e.g., Danilewicz, 2011) adopt a more
experientialist cognitive approach to the problem. Nonetheless, critical language
awareness of the teacher awaits to be challenged.
3.2 Critical Language Pedagogy
Critical language awareness works in an “alliance or coalition with advocates of

Critical Pedagogy” (Farias, 2005). This cooperation boils down to the concept of
empowerment which is inscribed in the definition of critical pedagogy as an “ed-
ucational movement, guided by passion and principle, to help students develop
consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, and connect to power
and the ability to take constructive action” (Giroux, 2010, p. 1). It is to be done by
exposing an ideological masking function performed by education aiming at
reproduction of the dominant culture and, thus, committing a symbolic assault by
subduing the voice of the disempowered (Szkudlarek & Śliwerski, 2009, p. 19).
Critical pedagogy argues that the institution of education, in the words of Althusser
(1971), is the prime ideological state apparatus that either reproduces and maintains
the present system, or transforms it, depending on the political need.
In language teaching, apart from policy issues, it involves a change to teaching
linguistic data from the product-oriented approaches, in which the rules are told to
process-approaches, involving “discovery, investigation and understanding”.
Danilewicz (2011, p. 20) perceives the latter as relating to awareness building.
Critical language pedagogy, in the context of CLA, would rather consider language
in its social context. In this regard, Farias (2005) quotes Clark and Ivanic (1998,
p. 170), commenting that “(…) language forms cannot be considered independently
of how they are used to communicate in context. Further, individual acts of com-
munication in context cannot be considered independently of social forces which
have set up the convention of appropriacy for that context”. Critical language
pedagogy received remarkable support in the work of Pennycook (2001), the father
of critical applied linguistics. Here, in turn, we come to the problem of language
norms in general or, as Clark and Ivanic call it, conversion of appropriacy.
Accuracy and appropriacy do not count if one does not “communicate meanings
that matter” (Clark & Ivanic, 1998, p. 171). This claim pertains to writing but surely
can be generalized to spoken communication.
Critical pedagogy highlights the threats of operating with the norm in the edu-
cational context. Szkudlarek (2003, p. 386) mentions in this regard the studies of a
British sociologist Basil Bernstein (1971), who demonstrated how the emotional
and laconic restricted code of the working class was perceived as inadequate by
teachers aspiring to the middle class and using the elaborated code. This is an
example of symbolic oppression exercised by schools, leading to the situation that
in an environment where the form is more important than the content children
retreat from expressing their opinions. The role of the school, on the one hand, is
the maintenance of socially established norms, including linguistic ones, but, on the
other hand, it is to deconstruct them in reaction to social, ideological or scientific
changes. Characteristic in this regard is a symposium titled “Norms in educational
linguistics, linguistics, didactics and cultural perspectives”, organized by Giessen
University, Germany in September 2008 (see Dose, Götz, Brato, & Brand, 2010).
A critical approach to normative, prescriptive linguistics, as accentuated by crit-
ical language pedagogy, is also fostered by ecological approaches to language
teaching. Their perception of language in education results in a call for educational
linguistics to make power relations embedded in the language a central and
constitutive element of any language activity. Drawing on critical language aware-
ness and critical discourse analysis, it tries to “expose linguistic practices that con-
done, whitewash or promote environmentally destructive practices, or that vilify,
marginalize, or ridicule environmentally concerned citizens or groups. Through a
focus on pedagogical processes of awareness raising and critical examination of
texts, the ecological language teacher makes learners aware of what is really being
said and done, and thus encourages the learners to take a critical stance”
(van Lier, 2004, p. 49).
4 Why CLA for Autonomy in L2?
Analyzing L2 materials, Wallace (2003, p. 18) states that they offer

“competency-based survival literacy or the vapid contentless language of the EFL
(English as a foreign language) texts”. Thus, EFL learners are seen as not engaged
with texts in a critical manner and this makes a classic marginalized group. EFL
texts are typically seen as neutral texts which act as a vehicle for presenting lin-
guistic structures. Empowerment of foreign language learners on a political level
needs activation of critical language reflection.
In fact, learners’ control is a vital issue both in autonomy and CLA. While the
concept of autonomy relates learners’ control to learning processes, the concept of
CLA perceives it, in a sense of second language acquisition research, as control over
language input. The common platform for both seems to be the role of attention in
204 H. Lankiewicz
getting control. Bialystok (1994) points out that attention is concerned with con-
sciousness and awareness. In her view, underscoring mental representations in cog-
nition, “[t]he process of focusing attention onto specific aspects of the representation
gives rise to the subjective feeling of awareness that has been called consciousness”
(p. 165). Thus, as Benson (2001, p. 88) claims, “language learners are in principle able
to control what they attend to in linguistic input”. According to CLA, the job of the
teacher is to make power-related issues noticed by learners. Hence, adducing
Schmidt’s (1990) noticing hypothesis, worked out in the field of second language
acquisition, in Benson’s opinion, learners must first apprehend or demonstrate
awareness of a particular linguistic form before its processing can take place.
One may similarly claim that CLA issues need the same sort of noticing. The
crucial thing is that the way of perceiving language as a social product, or a
collection of discursive practices, may diametrically influence the whole process of
language learning. Such a claim may, for instance, change the perception of lan-
guage standards or correctness in language learning. The death of the native
speaker, as announced by Paikeday (1985), in second language learning decon-
structed language authenticity in general and the “strive for native speakership as a
second language learner” (van Lier 2004, p. 31) in particular. This found its proper
elaboration in attitudinal typology towards foreign learning worked out by
Wilczyńska (2002) and her proposal of personal communicative competence (both
notions translated from Polish by H.L.). A learning attitude—identified as auton-
omous—is manifested with the slogans “I act” and “I am myself”, and has been
defined as aimed at using L2 resources in the same way as in the native language,
with the reservation that the linguistic and communicative identity has been
deconstructed in the form of a bilingual one (pp. 55–56). Assuming a
subject-oriented and active role of the L2 learner, Wilczyńska ascribes the goal of
developing personal communicative competence to the autonomous attitude.
The central issue in developing personal communicative competence is the
notion of authenticity, paralleled with the ideas of self, voice, identity, speaking and
thinking for oneself in language learning, as accentuated by ecological linguistics
(van Lier, 2004, p. 189). In Wilczyńska’s view, the function of personal commu-
nicative competence, considered on the advanced level (which is also the case in
this paper), allows the learner to communicate in a way which is authentic to him or
her, thus supporting his or her self-actualization (2002, p. 70). Wilczyńska, in the
invoked concept, concentrates on language learning, presenting its didactic and
psychological considerations for autonomy and underlining the learner’s control
over the learning process. In this paper, it is believed that reflection upon the nature
of language itself, as manifested by sociocultural theories and particularly CLA,
may be of vital importance for linguistic self-actualization in a foreign language in
respect to the political version of autonomy. The rationale behind this claim may be
derived from the function of metacognitive knowledge in developing autonomy in
language learning.
The value of metacognitive knowledge contributing to learners’ control over
language learning has been articulated by Wenden (1987, 1991, 1998). Based on
reflection, it is supposed to bring learners to the level of vaguely defined linguistic

autonomy (Wenden, 1998, p. 531). The job of the teacher in her view is to guide
learners “in improving and expanding their knowledge about learning”. Apparently,
her notion of metacognitive knowledge pertains only to psychological aspects of the
process of learning but, characterizing task knowledge, she also mentions “knowl-
edge about the nature of the task” (what kind of learning is it?) (Wenden, 1991, p. 43).
Benson (2001, p. 97) points out that “in the context of language learning, a task may
be as broad as learning the target language in order to use it communicatively with
others or as narrow as learning a new word. Whatever the task is, the learner must
draw on his or her knowledge of language and language learning in order to complete
it”. Considering the broader task, the knowledge of the nature of language per se,
surely determines the way of going about its learning. Thus, metacognition must be
shaped by knowledge or experiences. Falvell (1979) calls them metacognitive
experiences. The line of thinking proposed here corresponds with metacognitive
processes in cognitive psychology, “regarding determinants and consequences of the
monitoring of one’s knowledge” (Öz, 2005, p. 148).
Knowledge about the nature of language itself is construed here, not as some-
thing given to us, coming from the outside in the form of input (Krashen, 1985),
facilitating the growth of the language organ (Chomsky, 2000), but rather in the
light of an integrationist approach of Harris (1996), underlying its dialogical nature,
or an ecological dynamic view, “where messages have interpretative potential along
a range of dimensions” (van Lier, 2004, p. 53). It helps the learner take a more
active part in the process of learning. Linguistic truth loses its ultimate value of
working with a fixed code and becomes a result of social construction to be pen-
etrated, made conscious, and tamed with its ideological burden exposed, as
intended by CLA.
Reflection, an integral element of cognitive processes, a basis for building
metacognitive knowledge (see Benson 2001, p. 86), seen as having both individual
and social dimension, is perceived “as a key internal mechanism for development of
control over learning” (p. 93). Benson (2001) points out that autonomous language
learning entails, among others, reflection at the level of language. This is largely
understood in the sense of linguistic awareness, defined as “the development in
learners of an enhanced consciousness of and sensitivity to the forms and functions of
language” (Carter, 2003, p. 64). This is a very traditional perception of language
awareness, the way it was triggered by British tradition. Nowadays, the term has
evolved to match new conceptualizations of what language is, and what it means to
be a conscious and effective language user. The online definition of the notion, apart
from presenting it as “explicit knowledge about language, and conscious perception
and sensitivity in language learning, language teaching and language use”, extends
its scope to “a good knowledge about language, a conscious understanding of how
languages work, of how people learn them and use them” (ALA). Overlapping CLA,
language awareness encompasses issues regarding the relationship of language to
people and cultures.
Political autonomy in language learning, conceptualized as the top level of
language awareness, is a summative result of reflections regarding the formal
206 H. Lankiewicz
aspects of language, a psychological dimension of language learning and its use as

well as the realization of political acts achieved through language. This requires,
first of all, an ability to reflect upon the language itself. Developing autonomy needs
also the teacher’s conscious acts of directing students’ reflection towards issues
which are the interest of LA, CLA, and critical pedagogy. Developing a political
version of autonomy in language learning should become a clear objective for all
students who go professionally about languages. In fact, as Little (2012) points out,
regarding the concept of developing autonomy, one should be talking about the
autonomization of the language learning process so that students should become
more, in the case of the present consideration, politically autonomous regarding
language learning. Offering explicit courses in the discussed area surely enhances
the development of final linguistic autonomy (perceived as the product—the
required objective of education); yet another thing it is to make political,
autonomy-oriented issues a central component of autodidactic (Wilczyńska, 2002)
activities of students so that they take control of the language learning process.
Little (2012) duly asserts that the development of students’ “learning skills is never
entirely separable from the content of their learning, since learning how to learn a
second or foreign language is in some important respects different from learning
how to learn maths or history or biology”. Drawing students’ attention to problems
pertaining to the nature of language in a systematic way during a regular language
course might ‘decondition’ them not only from “learning habits or ways of thinking
about learning that are inimical to autonomy” (Benson, 2001, p. 94, after Kohonen,
1992, p. 17), but it may also initiate a level of awareness, allowing taking greater
control over the foreign language, thereby leading to internalization facilitated with
identification, which underlies personal communicative competence. One would be
surprised how many students of English as a foreign language naively attempt to
attain native-like proficiency, uncritically accepting questionable standards. CLA
and all other related notions, such as, for example, critical intercultural competence
(Byram, Nichols, & Stevens, 2001) should constitute an inspiration for the practices
of language teachers aiming to foster learners’ critical approach to language
learning, labeled political autonomy.
5 Going Practical—Proposal
The final section of the paper presents a practical proposal for evaluating and
developing students’ linguistic autonomy in reference to power-related issues, as
argued by CLA and shaped by the findings of the project. Evaluation, after
Tassinari (2012, p. 27), is understood as a “complex process of reflection on the
learning process and its results, involving both learners and teachers or advisors”.
Thus, ultimately, the tool is not that much designed to measure the untestable
(Benson, 2010) as to trigger reflections in students regarding power-related issues
embedded in language. The discussion with the teacher regarding the suggested
situation may result in students’ noticing problems overlooked before and, thus,
make them conscious language users and learners.
It is important to mention that the addressees of the proposal are college or
university students of English studies. The knowledge of a language at this level
requires high levels of awareness, including the critical dimension, for students to
be truly empowered as potential teachers and users of a foreign language. They are
to realize that, ultimately, it is them to have control over language so that language
is not ‘doing’ the thinking for them (Andrews, 1998, p. 279). Seidlhofer (2004,
p. 229, after Andrews, 2007, p. 164), adopting the English as a lingua franca
(ELF) approach, postulates that “instead of being nonnative speakers and perennial,
error-prone learners of English as a native language, they can be competent and
authoritative users of ELF”. This claim contains an additional assumption regarding
autonomization of the language learning process. Namely, it is postulated here that
increased critical language awareness should influence students’ learning practices.
It can be expected that students of English studies are exposed to courses of CDA or
CLA. This is, however, rarely the case, and, anyhow, metalinguistic knowledge
does not have to translate easily into everyday learning behavior. So, a vital thing
would be the inclusion of CLA issues in self-assessment and evaluation practices
for Practical English classes to promote autonomous linguistic behavior.
The author of the present paper came to believe that promoting autonomy in
language learning requires a substantial reference to issues pertaining to the
metacognitive dimension, accentuating the fact that language is the result of dis-
cursive practices. Consequently, it is assumed that foreign language learning, and
language learning in general, is shaped by conceptual foundations behind language
per se, be it language awareness or critical language awareness. Political autonomy
in foreign language learning, the top level of autonomous linguistic activity, that
some may find it difficult obtain as a product of linguistic experience or education,
might be accelerated by the adoption of a process approach to the development of
autonomy development. Hence, autonomy should constitute a vital component of
foreign language education for those who are majoring in foreign language studies,
be it prospective language teachers, translators, or interpreters, or any other
professionals.
Both the checklist (inspired by Tassinari, 2012) and situations are grounded in the
professional literature on language awareness and critical language awareness. Some
of them are purely theoretical, triggered by reading on related issues, while others
have been inspired by real life situations. They go hand in hand, each representing a
different CLA issue. The proposed evaluation tool was administered to students of
English studies at two institutions: the University of Gdańsk (Department of
Translation Studies) and Stanisław Staszic University of Applies Sciences in Piła
(educating potential teachers of English as a second a language). Second-year
undergraduate students were invited to see the author of the proposal during his duty
hours to tick the checklist and reflect upon ten situations (evaluation). This pilot
project lasted for a month with four separate sessions, one per week. It was in no way
208 H. Lankiewicz
obligatory to participate in the project. An invitation notice (written and oral)

informed students about the added value for them resulting from the participation in
the form of raised linguistic awareness. Altogether, 27 students took part in the
undertaking in both institutions (no distinction is made in this respect here). It is
worth mentioning that in none of the groups of students CLA was taught as a separate
course. Before the interview, it was checked whether they were familiar with the
concept of CLA. Only two students had some vague idea what it was.
The overall expected objective of the project was to raise students’ awareness
regarding CLA issues with expected consequences for their autonomous language
learning. Yet, the dual aim of the undertaking was to develop (objective one),
through reflection and self-evaluation, and measure (objective two) critical lan-
guage awareness. The fundamental assumption behind the project was that lan-
guage learning, just like acquiring any other skill, is more effective when one
possesses knowledge of how the language functions in social terms. The interview
with the teacher was not openly judgmental (the teacher did not offer ultimate
answers). It was supposed to stir reflection about the social and discursive nature of
language. The discrepancy between students’ declarations, as presented in the
checklist, and the teacher’s marking of situations might be indicative of a potential
for consciousness-raising. As to the second objective, all second-year students at
both institutions (present at a language class on a particular day) were asked to
solve a learning task demanding a degree of autonomy. The results of the partici-
pants of the project were compared with the ones who opted out.
The procedure of the project involved self-evaluation in the form of a checklist
(see Appendix 1), consciousness-raising situations (see Appendix 2), discussed
individually with the teacher, and a referential task, aimed to see whether its com-
pletion triggered potential for more autonomous behavior on the part of the learners
who participated in the project. Students were asked to do the following task:
As a part of your Practical English Course the teacher asks you to prepare with a partner a
project to record a ten-minute program on learning a foreign language titled “How to be a
more successful foreign language learner?” It is to motivate people who find the task of
language learning very challenging. Make a list of maximum ten items you would consider.
Please, be terse and make short simple slogan-like statements!
Each time a CLA issue appeared, it was considered a sign of autonomous

thinking about foreign learning language. The scores of all the students were
compared. It was expected that those participating in the project would outscore
those who had opted out, and would reveal more CLA sensitivity in the process of
language learning.
As to objective one, students’ declarative self-evaluation was much too opti-
mistic when compared with their responses to the situations. While the situations
were discussed with the teacher, he marked students’ answers to each one labeling
them as aware, unaware or doubtful. The decision was based on the theoretical
background presented above. Due to space restrictions, it is not possible to present
here the exact figures. The discrepancy between self-evaluation figures and situa-
tional evaluation may indicate that a checklist itself seems to be insufficient to result
in reflection, a claim compatible with Tassinari’s (2012) assumptions. As to
objective two, the suggestions concerning the referential task offered by project
participants include more CLA issues than answers delivered by those who opted
out. A significant indicator might be the fact that 11 highest scores belonged to
in-project people. They raised among others the following issues: “Do not be
discouraged by the teacher, this is also a foreign language to her”, “Don’t think
about RP, that’s bullshit, who speaks like this!”, “Nobody is perfect in a foreign
language”, “Polish people do not know the correct way of saying things, why
should you, say want you think is OK”, “Correctness? forget it”, “Do not be
discouraged by the school, you will use language outside it”, “You learn it for
yourself”, “Language will make you impress people”, “English is international, you
do not have to bother about British or American pronunciation”, or “Speak your
own way, that’s sexy!”.
Certainly, the most apparent result of the project, the applied instrument trig-
gered, was that refection on critical issues in foreign language learning needs to be
interpreted with caution due to the pilot character of the study. Additionally, a
reservation needs to be stressed here that this what is counted as a manifestation of
critical language awareness, showing potential for autonomous language behavior,
does not have to easily translate into students’ real learning behavior, parallel to the
claim that teacher language awareness may not find its direct reflection in his
teaching practices (Andrews, 2008, p. 288).
6 Conclusions
The author is fully aware of the limitations of the project itself as well as its
potential for developing and measuring students’ political dimensions of autonomy.
Firstly, the theoretical proposal of supplementing autonomy with CLA issues to
develop students’ political autonomy might be disputable as pertaining to expertise
knowledge. To avoid this criticism, the situations included are of a very general
nature. Critical language awareness is understood here in a very commonsensical
way, as awareness of social and discursive dimensions of language. Secondly,
neither the checklist nor the situational tasks are exhaustive, rather signaling some
problems. Thirdly, the whole concept of CLA is tinted with constructive subjec-
tivity, deconstruction of one power involves the creation of another center, even if
one claims to be neutral to indoctrination. Nonetheless, the fact remains that
obtaining political control over language and its learning needs some reflection of
the CLA order.
210 H. Lankiewicz
Appendix 1
Checklist
Instruction: Tick (✓) the statements to mean I can/do cross (✗) the ones to mean
the opposite.
1. I accept the stance that norms are the subject of discussion.
2. I can see that the use of words may disclose speaker’s/writer’s beliefs and
attitudes.
3. I can see through people’s hidden intentions behind particular use of grammar
forms.
4. I can recognize when language is used unsuitably to the situation.
5. I can tell the difference between ideology and practicality in language use.
6. I can accept the opinion that language is a dynamic “tissue” shaped by its users.
7. I can see the relation between people’s social position and the use of language.
8. I can see a problem with the claim that people learning a foreign language
should try to stick to a chosen standard version.
9. I can recognize that language use is a form of manipulation and persuasion.
10. I can see that language is a product of culture and certain phrases or words may
be the result of conversational practices and a different perception of politeness.
Appendix 2
Situational survey
1. A Polish foreign language student asks his native teacher (of English origin)
how to pronounce the name of the city of Glasgow. He insists on a particular
pronunciation invalidating alternatives suggested by the learner who travelling
widely within the British Isles has heard a variety of them. Should he accept the
teacher’s proposal? How can he be sure that the pronunciation offered by him is
the right one?
2. On an evaluation session of your essay about the place of religion in the
modern world (a written task for your foreign language class), the teacher
insists on capitalizing the word “god” throughout the paper, pointing out that
certain expression like “act of God”, God-fearing” are also conventionally
capitalized. Do you agree with this criticism? Is there any reason why the
student should insist on his way of spelling?
3. After a cabinet reshuffle in Great Britain during a press conference the Prime
Minister explains the changes by saying that “Some mistakes were made” and
continues using passive voice structures. Can you see any reasons behind the
overuse of the passive voice? Would it be any different in the Polish context?
Yes? No? Why?
4. A close British friend of yours (your peer), you have known for quite a long
time, known for being an easy-going and straightforward person, invites you to
go out by saying “Would you be so kind as to go with me to dinner tonight”.
Can you see any problem with this phrase? Why might he be using it?
5. The Polish language is flooded with English expressions both in professional
jargon and everyday use. Some people claim that it is a sign of linguistic
imperialism, others that is the result of a lingua franca position of English.
Which claim would you more agree with? Why?
6. You are buying a car and the car dealer learning that you are a student of
English obviously puts you to the test and asks you whether “It’s me” or “It’s I”
is the right form? When you tell him that the latter is right, he complements you
on good knowledge of English admitting that you are the only student of
English to present a “correct version” to him. How would you comment on it?
Can you see any problems with his claim?
7. The Polish learner of English as a foreign language with a very good command
of bookish British comes to study in America. Despite the fact he has always
been a good mixer in his native country, he notices certain alienation from his
American friends. He has been even hinted by some of them for being con-
ceited or “so cocksure of himself”. On several occasions his responses were met
with grinning. Where might the problem lie?
8. A teacher of English informs her Polish students that they should stick to a
chosen version of English e.g. American or British, and not mix the forms
because, as she underscores, “it causes lots of misunderstandings and results in
the mastery of an artificial language”. Do you agree with this claim? Why yes?
Why not?
9. A commercial leaflet of summer language schools in Britain promotes its
educational offer by the following slogan: “Only we can teach you the right
thing”. What might be the intended meaning of the phase?
10. A Polish immigrant in England dating an English girl calls on her but unfor-
tunately her mother opens the door and as a response to his request to see Susan
responds with words, “I’m afraid she’s not in”, to which he most gently asks
her: “Would it be possible for you to go and check it?”. Could you comment on
this situation?
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Second Language Learning and Teaching

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10129

ISSN 2193-7648 ISSN 2193-7656 (electronic)

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017

Printed on acid-free paper

This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature

Part II Language Learning Strategies

Part III Teacher Autonomy

About the Editors

Mirosław Pawlak is Professor of English in the English Department, Faculty of

Andrés Canga Alonso (Ph.D. in English Philology, University of Oviedo) is

include different aspects of teaching ESP, mainly business English, professional

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 3

is mediated by individual (e.g., working memory, learning style), linguistic (e.g.,

2 Grammar, Grammar Learning and Grammar Teaching

Before embarking on the discussion of autonomy in learning foreign language

automatize explicit knowledge to such an extent that it becomes accessible when

3 The Need for Autonomy in Learning Foreign Language

intended to facilitate the attainment of these goals, effectively managing the

4 Ways of Promoting Autonomy in Teaching Foreign

An autonomous approach to learning grammar can be encouraged in a number of

4.1 Necessary Steps Towards Fostering Autonomy

4.2 Raising Awareness of Learning and Teaching Grammar

Although sensitizing students to the complexity of grammar, mentioned in the

things, by asking students to express their preferences concerning the study of

4.3 Familiarizing Learners with Grammar Learning

4.4 Promoting the Use of ICT in Learning Grammar

A powerful tool in developing an autonomous approach to learning foreign

• demonstrating how Internet-based resources can aid the learning of grammar,

5 Implications and Caveats

As elucidated in the present paper, the complexity and multidimensionality of

Batstone, R. (1994). Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Abstract Learner autonomy is a multifaceted concept and as such it is problematic

It is widely acknowledged that autonomous learners understand the purpose of their

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 21

2 Goals Within the Framework of Learner Autonomy

3 Interaction Between Autonomy and Motivation

The relationship between autonomy and motivation is well established as both

4 Autonomy in the Classroom Context

Goals seem to be important ingredients of the teaching-learning process. However,

5.5 Results and Comments

• doing everything that has to be done to complete a task;

• redoing the most difﬁcult tasks and exercises;

Fostering learner autonomy is a gradual process and although ﬁnding fully

Appendix: Goal-Setting Logbook

Goals Importance Activities Possible problems and ways of overcoming them

Assessment of goal achievement Comments

Abstract This paper looks at learning by performing practical tasks, which

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 35

2.1 Deﬁnition of Simulation

According to Jones (1982), a simulation constitutes an event and as such it cannot

2.2 The Structure of a Simulation

Any simulation consists of four phases: preparation, introduction, activity and

2.3 The Design of a Simulation

In designing a simulation, it is useful to follow a predetermined structure, partic-

TOPIC Getting informed consent.

LEVEL A2-B1 CEFR upwards.

TIME 2 lessons (each 45 minutes long) including follow-up discussion and

AIM To develop communicative competencein English for Specific Purposes Medical

LANGUAGE Language skills integrated: speaking and listening.

ORGANISATION Classroom with access to the Internet (90 minutes).

Fig. 1 Example of a simulation task for general nurses (Schormová, 2014)

of examination and instruments needed with the class. Ask about