| Pub. Date | : Mar, 2021 |
|---|---|
| Product Name | : The IUP Journal of Soft Skills |
| Product Type | : Article |
| Product Code | : IJSS40321 |
| Author Name | : Ali Rahimi and Zahra Fahimi |
| Availability | : YES |
| Subject/Domain | : Management |
| Download Format | : PDF Format |
| No. of Pages | : 10 |
Recently, learner autonomy has gained great attention in educational research and pedagogical practices. For the purpose of promoting learner autonomy in a language classroom, first of all, we need to make teachers aware of the concept and its benefits. It is due to the fact that teachers are the ones who create and maintain learning communities. Accordingly, the focus of this study was to explore Iranian EFL teachers' intuition and understanding of learner autonomy and their perceptions of teachers' roles in autonomous learning. In order to figure out the situation, 160 English teachers answered an open-ended questionnaire. Qualitative data was analyzed through content analysis and other relevant statistical procedures. The findings demonstrated the current understanding of the teachers about the concept of learner autonomy in language learning and their perceptions of teachers' roles in autonomous learning.
"Because of the complexity and rapidity of change in our highly technological societies", it is important to help our learners "to develop the attitude that learning is a life-long process and to acquire the skills of self-directed learning" (Knowles, 1976: p. 23, cited in Wenden, 1987: p. 9). However, due to the highly complex nature of language and language learning (Dickinson and Carver, 1980), encouraging autonomy in language learners often proves to be a hugely difficult objective. Nevertheless, because of the rapid development in technological science, there have been great changes in the society, specifically in education. With the variety of tools available for learners, there have been opportunities to thoroughly or partially be involved in learning process no matter where they are, for instance, at home, through computers, or via their cellphones (Kurtz, 2012). This is more fruitful in case learners are given some freedom to assume their own learning. Littlemore (2001) draws attention to the importance of new technologies such as computers, the Internet, multimedia, etc. and also some not-so-new ones like language