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We are proud to publish the paper below by Sultan Erdoğan – the first in our new-look AILA newsletter. We welcome submissions – send us your short papers, reviews or articles!

Learner training via course books, and teacher autonomy: A case of need

Sultan Erdoğan, Center for English Language Teacher Education, University of Warwick

In this short article I summarize some findings from a study of the use by Turkish secondary school teachers of a UK-published EFL course book based on principles of ‘learner training’. In response to Sada Daoud’s question at the end of her paper for the 4th SC on Learner Autonomy Symposium (Daoud 2002), my own study supports the proposal that teacher autonomy is a pre-requisite for developing learner autonomy. Also, while Vera Santos, in her contribution to the same symposium (Santos 2002), suggests the value of presenting learner autonomy as a learning tool rather than an ideological trend, for teachers themselves the empowering side of ‘autonomy’ should not be denied. Since autonomy has come into fashion, a plethora of course books incorporating learner training have emerged and they are not without problems when EFL teachers try to implement them in the classroom.

While the book in question (one of several recommended by the Ministry of Education) was rated highly overall in questionnaires completed by the 61 students and 2 teachers (‘Sevgi’ and ‘Canan’), there were constraints in implementing some of the ‘learning to learn’ activities, particularly a section requiring students to complete a ‘learning diary’ at the end of every unit.

The Teacher’s Book states that the course aims to promote learner training, but what learner training involves is not explained in detail. The teachers are assumed to already have knowledge and experience in this field. In reality, in the context of this study, this was not the case. Sevgi had 17 years of teaching experience, but did not have any prior knowledge of learner training, while Canan was a novice teacher who had only learnt about it in theory, at the university. The teachers were persuaded that learner training was something desirable; however, they did not know how to cope with unexpected problems in practice.

After some initial trials, both Sevgi and Canan found that students were reluctant to speak up individually about Learning Diary entries when nominated. At this point they gave up, preferring to leave the Learning Diary out of their teaching instead of looking for other ways of using it.

In the questionnaire, both teachers attributed the reasons for omission of the Learning Diary to their students’ habits or background. I interviewed them, partly to learn more about why they felt like this. In answer to the question, ‘Why did you find it difficult to get students to use the Learning Diary section?’ they said:

Sevgi: ‘Students do not have such an experience when they come here and it is difficult to change their perceptions at this age. They have their own expectations like learning grammar or vocabulary quickly, with a lot of exercises.’

Canan: ‘They see it as a time waster. They like studying rules or learning vocabulary to be successful in the exams. I know it is important to self-evaluate oneself, but something goes wrong. They just do not want to speak up and share their feelings’

At this point I asked Canan how the students responded to the Project Work activities in the book. She commented that:

Canan: ‘In Project Work they study in groups. They like interacting with their friends and creating something. I think they like it.’

In the Teacher’s Book group work had been recommended for Project Work, but not explicitly for use of the Learning Diary in class. Paradoxically, both teachers did not consider transferring one successful strategy (group work) to another task (the Learning Diary). In the Teacher’s Book no suggestion is made for alternative ways of implementing the Learning Diary. This was something they would have had to discover by themselves.

In answer to a separate interview question, ‘What do you think of students’ perceptions of having responsibility for their own learning?’, both teachers stated that the education system did not give opportunities to students for taking responsibility and thus it was difficult to change their habits. The students, they commented, were unconscious of their language production and didn’t know how to exploit their strengths to improve on their weaknesses.

On the other hand, students themselves rated a separate Self-Check (i.e., self-assessment) exercise in the Workbook – which was supposed to form a link to the Learning Diary – as one of the most enjoyable aspects of the course overall, and the majority demonstrated an awareness of the fact that keeping a regular learning diary would enable them to monitor their progress, review each unit and detect their weak and strong points in English.

In response to another interview question, ‘Why do you think you gave up covering that section after having the difficulty?’, the teachers said:

Sevgi: ‘In fact I have not thought about it till now. . . Maybe to be able to follow my yearly plan because it used to take too much time to try to…to try to persuade them to speak up! Or maybe I myself felt a bit desperate.’

Canan: ‘I got a big silence each time. I felt like I lost my control over the situation.’

Teachers’ own views on how the textbook could be improved included the following. They did not say the ‘Learning Diary’ section should be removed, but instead requested more guidance in the Teacher’s Book, including:

better explanation of learner training theory,
examples of practical problems that are likely to occur,
possible solutions to these problems,
a bibliography for further reading about learner training.

Evaluating what was asserted by the teachers, in relation to data gathered from students, the following points emerge for consideration:

The teachers tended to blame students and/or the education system for omitting the Learning Diary section in the textbook, but many students themselves saw value in this activity and showed they were able to take responsibility in other (Self-Check and Project Work) activities. They also responded positively to group work, as teachers stated. There is potential here for developing learner autonomy which went unnoticed by the teachers because they were governed by preconceptions about students and unable to consider alternative strategies for implementation (for example, group work).
Thus, it seems to have been as much the teachers’ as students’ lack of autonomy which was the problem. Their initial experience of failure seems to have reinforced a lack of confidence and the feeling of losing control. Sevgi stated that she felt ‘desperate’. Simply promoting learner training via teaching materials is not enough to prepare teachers psychologically to cope with unexpected problems.
The education system in the context of this study was criticised as giving no chance to become responsible for one’s own learning, but the teachers themselves have been trained within the same education system. In this case, at first sight, Sevgi and Canan could not go beyond the structure and methodology of the book. However, when given the chance during the interviews, they were able to identify their need to learn more about learner training and were able to criticise and suggest improvements to the Teacher’s Book. Institutions which train prospective teachers and also in-service training programs need to take into account this kind of potential for teacher autonomy, providing more opportunities for self-discovery and developing the ability to identify strengths and overcome weaknesses.

This particular case shows that it is not enough to simply incorporate learning to learn activities into textbooks as ‘learning tools’. As Lee (1996) suggests, the danger of ‘deskilling’ of the teacher continues when the teacher is too dependent on the textbook and is not encouraged to develop awareness in discovering appropriate ways to incorporate new ideas in a flexible way in the classroom.

References

Daoud, Sada A. 2002. ‘Developing EFL teacher and learner autonomy through teacher-initiated action research’. Accessed 25 June 2003 from:
http://lc.ust.hk/~ailasc/symposium/responses.html#daoud

Lee, W. 1996. ‘The role of materials in the development of autnonomous learning’. In R. Pemberton, E.S.L. Lee, W.W.F. Or and H.D. Pierson (eds.) Taking Control: Autonomy in Language Learning. Hong Kong: Hong University Press.

Santos, Vera. 2002. ‘Stimulating autonomy in the foreign language classroom: convincing the teachers’. Accessed 25 June 2003 from:
http://lc.ust.hk/~ailasc/symposium/realities.html#santos