Dickinson (1992)

Learning circle: Reflections on Dickinson’s article
Group members: Meili, Anara, Nancy and Suzie
Secretary: Nadeyah
1) As a group we discussed that teachers in Dickinson’s article are unaware of their learner training skills. They did not know at the time that they were actually in the process of teaching autonomy for example: they were giving students chances to learn vocabulary on their own, teachers were trying to raise students’ awareness of language learning, they were facilitating and guiding students during group work, pair work and they encouraged them to assess their own progress.
2) Meili stated that as a teacher she gave her students choices during activities such:
- choosing partners in group work
- choosing the role that students want to act out during activities such as dialogues and role-plays.
Anara explains that in her classes she used to give several choices for homework topics and the students were able to choose what homework they wanted to do. For instance: speaking exercises such as reading either the text alone or working with a partner in a role-play.
On the other hand, Nancy encourages her students to use an English-English dictionary and not a Chinese-English Dictionary because she wants students to get used to thinking in English rather than using Chinese translation.
Suzie makes an effort to encourage students to not stress while using English in class. She thinks that motivation is increased by giving the students the choice to either work alone or have peer-assessment on the topics before the next lesson because it will create a relaxing environment to learn the language.
3) Some schools in Asian countries believe that learner training is not encouraged because students are mostly dependent on the teacher. However, it is clear that some teachers used some sort of leaner training without realizing the different strategies that they use are considered ‘learner autonomy’ training. In Middle Eastern countries, students in government schools are viewed as teacher-dependant in most cases because they are not allowed to drift off of the lesson, they are to do what the teacher says without question, they are not permitted to have a choice in how they learn whereas, in private schools students are almost fully autonomous in every aspect of learning.
4) We as MA students are not fully autonomous on this course because we need to follow certain regulations and procedures set out to us by our tutors and school, which hinders some of our autonomous nature for example, in term one we were not given a choice to what topics we wanted to cover but in term two we noticed a change in the fact that Richard and Barbra gave us the opportunity to choose the topics that interest us most as MA TESOL students.
5) We agree that we are to some extent willing to work independently on this course, however, we feel that there is a need for more explicit advice in some areas.