Learning foreign language is no easy job which deserves great effort. Everybody has his own method in foreign language learning. It is said that autonomous learning plays an important role in students` learning foreign language. However, autonomy is not born with students, which raises questions of how to foster autonomy and in what way can autonomy be well fostered.
The word autonomy comes from Greek autos (meaning “self” ) and nomos (meaning “rule, governance, or law”). Literally, therefore, autonomy means “the state of being self-governed of self-sovereign.”(Willard Gaylin and Bruce Jennings, 1996, P.30). Holec (1981, p.3) defined autonomy as “the ability to take charge of one’s own learning." Benson (2001, p.47) defined it as “the capacity to control one’s own learning". According to my understanding I would like to define autonomy as “ one’s own ability to make a decision of when, where, what and how to learn .”
We know that autonomy is treated as a capacity belonging to the learner. It is an attribute of the learner rather than the learning situation. Most researchers agree that autonomy cannot be “taught” or “learned”. In describing autonomy as a developmental progress, I therefore use the term “fostering autonomy” to refer to processes initiated by teachers of institutions. (Benson, 2003)
There are many factors affecting the fostering autonomy. Sensibility is one of them. The sensibility here includes the learner’s emotion, feeling, mood and attitude in the process of studying. Sensibility factors can be divided into two classifications. One is the learner’s individual factors, which include anxiety, inhibition, self-esteem and motivation. The other is the sensibility between learner and learner or learner and teacher which made up of empathy, and classroom transaction.
The learner’s individual factors could be a big obstacle in fostering autonomy. A student who is always anxious, inhibited, and has low self-esteem will not be confident enough to solve the problems he accounts during the study; Generally speaking, motivation including intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is always the reason why the learners hope to foster autonomy. Empathy is the consciousness or an action which you put yourself in anothe`s position to evaluate a person or a certain thing. The most important factor that affects fostering autonomy lies in the classroom, where students and teachers take activities and communicate with each other. The class atmosphere and relationship of learner-learner and learner-teacher formed in classroom are the most likely factors that affect fostering autonomy.
To help students foster autonomy, teachers should think highly of students` expressions of their sensibility, try to understand students and communicate with students sincerely. Mary M. McCaslin and Thomas L. Good (1996, preface, p.xvi.) believed that listening is basic to the teacher-student relationship. They also believed that listening conveys and promotes more than trust, although trust is certainly a critical feature of healthy and helpful relationships. They suggested that teachers listen to students as learners, individuals, and as social beings. Teachers should be watchful, always aware of what students say and do in the classroom, praising and encouraging those who are easily getting anxious to make them become confident step by step. Teachers should be tolerant, allowing students to make mistakes. Teachers should learn to appreciate students, admitting that every student has his own personality. Being respected, students will be more willing to join in the class activities, through which they can foster autonomy gradually. In the process of teaching, in order to provide students a harmonious classroom atmosphere, teachers can encourage students to finish the tasks in groups in which way they can cooperate with each other. Cooperating is helpful in reducing students` anxiety, protecting their self-esteem and forming good relationships between student and student as well as student and teacher. Through cooperating, students communicate with each other directly; help each other to finish the task together. While students are working in groups, the teacher is walking around the classroom giving advice and instructions and help to the students, which is benefit to forming of close relationship between student and teacher. Through group-learning, the teacher and students can communicate freely; by which way students will be more interested in studying, thus realizing the goal of fostering autonomy.
Fostering autonomy depends on students` own effort as well as teachers` help. As students, they should eliminate their individual sensibilities which do harm to their fostering autonomy. As teachers, they should try their best to make students comfortable and confident in the classroom. Only by that way I think can students foster autonomy efficiently.
We should put more emphasis on the sensibility factors which include the students` as well as the teachers` in the classroom, because they are of great importance in fostering autonomy.
(Reference: 1.Willard Gaylin, Bruce Jennings. The Perversion of Autonomy: The Proper Uses of Coercion and Constraints in a Liberal Society /
2. Mary M. McCaslin, Thomas L. Good. Listening in classrooms /
3. The data given by Mr. Huang.)
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