Learner Autonomy In Education

Defining autonomy can be difficult because of its broad and abstract nature; however, one of the simplest and well known definitions is by Holec (1981) who defines autonomy as the ability to take charge of one’s own learning. According to Benson (2010) most people know that autonomy and autonomous learning is not synonyms of 'self-instruction’, ‘self-access ', 'self-study ', 'self-education ', 'out-of-class learning ' or 'distance learning '. While it was not until the 1970’s that autonomy started being used in the field of language learning, it is a concept that has been around for centuries in other fields like Medicine, Religion and Philosophy. According to Benson (2001) Galileo affirmed the importance of autonomy by saying

It will then go on to talk about the role of teachers and students and how learner autonomy can be applied in a language classroom setting. Furthermore, this paper aims to discuss the advantages of learner autonomy as well as its shortcomings. A major section of this paper will also focus on how LA can be applied in the Pakistani context and I will outline some activities that have been previously used in different contexts that can be introduced to promote LA in Pakistan. I will conclude by stating that learner autonomy is effective by improving learner’s motivation and improving the confidence of learners to work

However, Illes (2012) stated “the selection of tasks and materials that aim to facilitate learning requires expert knowledge and expertise that teachers possess” and in the Pakistani context I believe that teachers will still be the ones making decisions about the above. The students will be frazzled at the thought of making decisions about progression of syllabus and which materials to use. The classrooms in Pakistan tend to closely follow a printed syllabus which is handed by the teachers at the beginning of the academic year.

In the next section I will outline how LA can be introduced in Pakistan with some successful examples that have been used before.

4.1 Activities that can promote Learner Autonomy in classrooms across Pakistan

Promoting learner autonomy is a complex procedure especially in a place like Pakistan. Class size tends to be large with not many technological facilities. Traditional methodology is deeply rooted in the students and individual learner styles are not taken into account. However, that is not to say that certain simple projects that promote autonomy cannot be introduced. Teachers must give the learners as many choices regarding the learning process so that students also feel they have genuine authority. Teachers should always be encouraging towards project work.

Some of the successful projects that have been implemented earlier