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How autonomous are our students? Risultati di una ricerca italiana

How autonomous are our students? Risultati di una ricerca italiana. Marcella Menegale Ca’ Foscari University of Venice , Italy Venice 9 September 2011. Defining Language Learner Autonomy. Capacity to take charge of one's own learning, choosing to do it consciously and responsibly .

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How autonomous are our students? Risultati di una ricerca italiana

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  1. How autonomous are our students? Risultati di una ricerca italiana Marcella Menegale Ca’ FoscariUniversityofVenice, Italy Venice 9 September 2011

  2. Defining Language Learner Autonomy Capacity to take charge of one's own learning, choosing to do it consciously and responsibly. It is the result of a personal mixture of different aspects connected to language learning: attitude, motivation, experience, context. This capacity must be acquired gradually in interdependence between the learner and any external language input.

  3. Learner beliefs: • perceptions of the role of the teacher/their own role • self-confidence and self-efficacy • willingness to take charge of one’s learning • attributional factors

  4. ISSUE: measuring LLA Concerns in measuring LLA: -multidimensional construct (Benson 2001; Little 1991; Nunan 1997; ) -psychological aspect (Breen & Mann 1997) -no explicit preparation Need for LLA assessment: If autonomy is not explicitly included in the curriculum, the majority of students will not see its importance (Boud 2002; O’Leary 2007) Self-directed Learning Readiness Scale (SDLRS) - Guglielmino (1977) Self-direction in Second Language Learning Measurement Scale (SSLLMS) – Lai (2001) Self Regulated Questionnaire (SRQ) - Brown et al. (1999) Components of Self-Regulated Learning (CSRL) - Niemivirta (1998 in Torrano Montalvo, Gonzales Torres 2004:14) Questionnaire by Cotterall (1995; 1999), by Spratt et al. (2002), by Zhang & Li (2004 in Dafei 2007:9) , by Zhoulin (2007)

  5. Test reliability Factoranalysis (principalfactoranalysis; scree plot; communalities) Internalconsistencereliability:Cronbach Coeff. .78

  6. RESULTS

  7. There is no significant difference in autonomy level between students of different ages χ² = 3,702, Sig. > ,05, gdf = 2 Students are shown to be rather resistant to language learner autonomy

  8. Positive outcomes • They acknowledge that their effort in learning is important to achieve successful results • Willingness to • find out what their learning style is • to monitor what they study and learn • to assess their learning

  9. Negative outcomes • Low level of self-confidence and self-efficacy • Students think it is up to their teacher to take decisions on their learning (closure in traditional roles) • They are not aware of the use they make of the FL outside school

  10. Some other findings... • Teachers’ actions to promote language learner autonomy versus students’ perceptions Why don‘t learners learn what teachers teach? (Allwright 1984)

  11. Teacher expectation of their students’s ability to be autonomous is even less than students’s belief

  12. Some students’ comments:_____________________________________________________________________________________________ “In studying my second foreign language I found fewer difficulties than in studyng the first. That could probably be because I already had an overview of the language learning method…I did not use any strategy, instead I tried to keep distance among languages so to learn them separately” (Secondary school, 5° Class, Liceo Linguistico) “When I start to study my second foreign language , I remember finding greater problems because it is much more complex and articulated (as to grammar, structure and lexis), and I also used different learning methods because teachers required different ways of teaching” (Secondary school, 3° Class) “I adopted different ways of learning for each foreign language I have studied, as teachers require us to do that.” (Secondary school, 1° Class)

  13. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ “I think it is useful that method of doing things that please and interest you, using the foreign language (TV programmes you like, journals, …) so to get a double advantage: to widely exercise your listening (you deal with topic you are interesting in) and to do it in a more productive way (because curiosity stimulates and speeds learning)” (Secondary school, 5° Class, Liceo Linguistico)

  14. Concluding considerations: • Urge for crossdisciplinary language learning • Need for teacher autonomy • Research on out-of-school learning

  15. Things can change... Thank you for your attention menegale@unive.it

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