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Language Learner Autonomy: Some Fundamental Considerations Revisited

Article  in  Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching · April 2007

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Language Learner Autonomy: Some
Fundamental Considerations Revisited
David Little
School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences, Centre for
Language and Communication Studies, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
The concept of learner autonomy is often applied to the process and content of
language learning but not specifically to its intended outcome, the development of
proficiency in a second or foreign language. Against this tendency, the present paper
argues for an understanding of language learner autonomy in which the develop-
ment of learner autonomy and the growth of target language proficiency are
mutually supporting and fully integrated with each other. It further argues that
only on the basis of such an understanding can learner autonomy move to the centre
of language teaching theory and practice. The paper begins by considering the
origins of the universally accepted definition of learner autonomy, ‘the ability to take
charge of one’s own learning’. It then briefly reviews social-psychological and
cognitive evidence in favour of promoting learner autonomy before discussing
constructivist theories of pedagogy and their implications for a theory of language
learner autonomy. From this it derives three fundamental principles
involvement, learner reflection and target language use

of learner
and concludes by
considering some of the ways in which these principles may be implemented in
the language classroom.

doi: 10.2167/illt040.0

Keywords: autonomy, language and thought, learner involvement, learning

journals, reflection, target language use

Introduction
To begin with, in the early 1980s, the concept of learner autonomy was
mostly associated with adult education and self-access learning systems and
seemed to be a matter of learners doing things on their own. By the end of that
decade, however, partly under the impact of learner-centred theories of
education, it was beginning to figure in discussion of language teaching
generally, and through the 1990s more and more national curricula came to
include learner autonomy (often dressed in borrowed clothes: ‘independent
learning’, ‘critical thinking’) as a key goal. This brought an important shift of
emphasis: learner autonomy now seemed to be a matter of learners doing
things not necessarily on their own but for themselves. These developments
were accompanied, and to some extent driven, by a steady increase in the
number of academic publications dealing with one or another aspect of learner
autonomy. By the turn of the century textbooks designed for use in language
teacher education had begun to include chapters or sections on learner
autonomy (e.g. Harmer, 2001; Hedge, 2000).

1750-1229/07/01 014-16 $20.00/0 – 2007 D. Little

Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching Vol. 1, No. 1, 2007

14
Language Learner Autonomy Revisited 15

None of this means, of course, that autonomy is now a defining

characteristic of language learners around the world; on the contrary, the
practical realisation of language learner autonomy remains elusive. Much
academic discussion has been concerned to define what it is. For some the
concept has been associated with Western liberal democracy, which makes it
immediately suspect as a potential weapon of colonialism. Others have
detached individual autonomy from learning, taking it to mean that learners
(and their teachers) should have the freedom to do whatever they please,
presumably including nothing. Empirical research has focussed on issues that
certainly have to do with language learner autonomy
for example, the
systematic evaluation of self-access learning systems, or explorations of learner
attitudes, motivations, beliefs and narratives. But very little research has
focused explicitly on the relation between learner autonomy, the processes of
language learning and the development of proficiency in the target language
(an important exception is the work of Dam and Legenhausen: Dam &
Legenhausen, 1996, 1997; Legenhausen, 1999, 2001, 2003).
My purpose in this paper is to restate an understanding of language learner
autonomy in which the development of learner autonomy and the growth of
target language proficiency are not only mutually supporting but fully
integrated with each other. This seems to me important, for it is only on the
basis of such an understanding that we can implicate learner autonomy in a
theory of language teaching: a set of general pedagogical principles that enable
us to elaborate specific language teaching and learning procedures. Against a
tendency that I observe in much of the literature on learner (and more recently
teacher) autonomy, I follow Bruner (1966: 40) in believing that any theory of
instruction is necessarily prescriptive in the sense that it sets forth the rules, or
principles, that we must follow in order to achieve particular goals, and in
doing so provides a yardstick for evaluating any particular way of teaching or
learning. In other words, I believe that a theory of language learner autonomy
should tell us what it is necessary to do in order to develop autonomous
language learners and users and at the same time provide us with criteria by
which to evaluate our efforts.

The Ability to Take Charge of One’s Own Learning

If a single common thread runs through the increasingly diverse literature,
it is that the essence of learner autonomy is the ability to take charge of one’s own
learning . This foundational definition was provided by Holec in Autonomy and
Foreign Language Learning, a report that was first published by the Council of
Europe in 1979 (cited here as Holec, 1981). Holec wrote his report within the
general context of the Council of Europe’s work on the theory and practice of
adult education. This was founded on the principle that adult education
should ‘develop the individual’s freedom by developing those abilities which
will enable him to act more responsibly in running the affairs of the society in
which he lives’ (Holec, 1981: 1). According to this view adult education
‘becomes an instrument for arousing an increasing sense of awareness and
liberation in man, and, in some cases, an instrument for changing the
16 Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching

environment itself. From the idea of man ‘‘product of his society’’, one moves
to the idea of man ‘‘producer of his society’’ ’ (Janne, 1977: 15; cit. Holec, 1981:
3). Such a view had clear political implications for educational systems as it
entailed a need to develop innovative structures to accommodate innovative
approaches. It also implied that adult language learning should have an
instrumental purpose and that adult language learning programmes should be
capable of meeting the specific communicative needs of individual learners.
The argument for a move from ‘directed teaching’ to ‘self-directed learning’
was motivated by a combination of political and practical principles, captured
in Trim’s declaration that one of the Council of Europe’s ideals was to
make the process of language learning more democratic by providing the
conceptual tools for the planning, construction and conduct of courses
closely geared to the needs, motivations and characteristics of the learner
and enabling him so far as possible to steer and control his own
progress. (Trim, 1978: 1)
For Holec the concept of learner autonomy has consequences not only for
the way in which learning is organised but also for the kind of knowledge that
is acquired. If the learner himself determines the goals and content of learning,
‘objective, universal knowledge is [. . .] replaced by subjective, individual
knowledge’: ‘the learner is no longer faced with an ‘‘independent’’ reality that
escapes him, to which he cannot but give way, but with a reality which he
himself constructs and dominates’ (Holec, 1981: 21). Holec’s use of the verb
‘construct’ evidently refers to explicit rather than implicit processes, learner
initiative and control rather than the unconscious and involuntary workings of
cognition. But elsewhere in his report he notes the view of language learning
that was beginning to emerge from empirical research towards the end of the
1970s: ‘an active, creative operation by means of which the learner converts
into acquired knowledge information provided for him in an organized
manner (teaching) or in non-organized form (‘‘natural’’ untreated informa-
tion)’ (p. 23). Learner autonomy thus appears to sit comfortably with
constructivist theories of learning, though Holec does not explore the relation
between them.
Holec’s failure to pursue the full psychological (constructivist) implications
of learner autonomy may help to explain a contradiction in his position.
Learner autonomy entails a shift from ‘directed teaching’ to ‘self-instructed
learning’; but the ability to take charge of one’s own learning is ‘not inborn but
must be acquired either by ‘‘natural’’ means or (as most often happens) by
formal learning, i.e. in a systematic, deliberate way’ (Holec, 1981: 3). This leads
Holec to posit two quite distinct objectives for language teaching: to help
learners to achieve their linguistic and communicative goals on the one hand
and to become autonomous on the other. He notes: ‘This raises the problem of
how far the methods adopted to achieve the first objective and to achieve the
second objective are compatible’ (p. 23). For Holec, becoming an autonomous
learner is clearly one thing and language learning another. And yet his claim
that learner autonomy replaces ‘objective, universal knowledge’ with ‘sub-
jective, individual knowledge’ (p. 21) implies a necessary relation between
learning process, the content of learning and the use the learner can make of
Language Learner Autonomy Revisited 17

what is learnt. As I explained in my introduction, exploring that relation and

considering its consequences for language teaching and learning is the
purpose of this paper.

Autonomy, Competence, Relatedness and Intersubjectivity

There is plenty of evidence from classrooms and self-access centres to
suggest that learners are often reluctant to take charge of their own learning.
They are accustomed to the passive role that school traditionally assigns to
learners and distrustful of the idea that they should set learning targets, select
learning materials and activities, and evaluate learning outcomes. Salmon
(1998: 23) argues that this passive role coincides with the widespread idea that
children are not yet ready for social responsibility, which she contrasts with
domestic reality:
To parents, even babies seem to have a will of their own; they are hardly
passive creatures to be easily moulded by the actions of others. From
their earliest years, boys and girls make their active presence, their wilful
agency, their demands and protests, very vividly felt. In every household
that has children, negotiations must be made with young family
members: their personal agendas have somehow to be accommodated.
(Salmon, 1998: 24)
In other words, it is in our nature to be autonomous, to be proactive in
exploring and responding to our environment and to persist in following the
agendas we set for ourselves. Any parent knows how difficult it can be to
distract a small child from a course of action that is socially undesirable or
physically dangerous.
According to the American social psychologist Deci, autonomy is one of
three basic needs that we must satisfy in order to achieve a sense of self-
fulfilment. We are autonomous, he proposes, when we are ‘fully willing to do
what [we] are doing and [we] embrace the activity with a sense of interest and
commitment’ (Deci, 1996: 2). The other two basic needs are for competence and
relatedness. We have a feeling of competence when we confront and
successfully overcome ‘optimal challenges’ (p. 66); and we experience
relatedness when we love and are loved by others (p. 88). It is sometimes
assumed that the need for relatedness conflicts with the need for autonomy,
but as Deci (1996: 89) points out, that is to confuse autonomy with
independence:
Independence means to do for yourself, to not rely on others for personal
nourishment and support. Autonomy, in contrast, means to act freely,
with a sense of volition and choice. It is thus possible for a person to be
independent and autonomous (i.e., to freely not rely on others), or to be
independent and controlled (i.e., to feel forced not to rely on others).
From the perspective of Deci’s theory of self-regulation, the freedom that
autonomy entails is confirmed by our competence and constrained by our
dependence on others. Applied to contexts of formal learning, the theory
18 Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching

predicts that learners who are autonomous (volitional in their learning) will be
fulfilled and thus motivated learners. It also predicts that their autonomy will
be undermined if they do not feel that their learning effort is paying off.
The notion of relatedness reminds us that learning usually depends on
interaction with other people; indeed, Deci’s three needs implicitly recognise
our dual nature. On the one hand each of us incorporates cognitive and
affective processes to which no one else can have direct access; on the other
hand we are inescapably social beings who from the moment of our birth
depend on other people in an infinite variety of ways. In any adequate
definition of what it is to be human, both dimensions of our nature, individual-
cognitive and social-interactive, are always and simultaneously present. But if
our cognitive capacity is inborn, must our capacity to interact with others be
acquired, or is it too part of our innate endowment? Over the past quarter of a
century research on early child development has shown that we have an
inborn capacity for ‘intersubjectivity’ that makes us interactive by nature. In
particular, the work of Trevarthen and his associates (summarised in
Trevarthen, 1998: 16) has shown that children are born with ‘motives to find
and use the motives of other persons in ‘‘conversational’’ negotiation of
purposes, emotions, experiences and meaning’. In other words, children enter
the world primed to take the initiative in establishing reciprocal relationships
with their caregivers. One remark of Trevarthen’s is especially worth reflecting
on as it suggests an inevitable and necessary link between motivation,
autonomy, development, reflectivity and communication:
This inborn intersubjective faculty of the infant must be seen as a direct
effect of pure, unthinking motivation. Nevertheless, it has a rudimentary
reflectivity and an autonomy that presage thoughtful message-making in
the head, and communication of interest in a shared world. (Trevarthen,
1992: 105)
The concept of intersubjectivity helps to define the relation between autonomy
and the interdependence of relatedness; it is a topic to which I shall return.

Constructivist Learning Theories

While the Council of Europe was promoting the democratisation of adult
education and developing learner-centred tools for the design and delivery of
adult language learning programmes, educational psychology was promoting
the idea of learner-centredness in theory and practice. In the Council of
Europe’s work, learner-centredness arose from the notion that each adult
language learner has a unique set of communicative needs. In educational
psychology, on the other hand, learner-centredness derived overwhelmingly
from constructivist epistemologies.
There are many varieties of constructivism, but all make the same basic
claim: that we construct our knowledge by bringing what we already know
into interaction with the new information, ideas and experiences we
encounter. Thus, according to constructivist epistemologies, knowledge is
not a set of universal ‘truths’ but a set of ‘working hypotheses’ (Airasian &
Language Learner Autonomy Revisited 19

Walsh, 1997: 445) that are always subject to refinement, change, rejection and
replacement. Kelly (1991: I, 51) put it as follows in his Psychology of Personal
Constructs :
The constructions one places upon events are working hypotheses,
which are about to be put to the test of experience. As one’s anticipations
or hypotheses are successively revised in the light of the unfolding
sequence of events, the construction system undergoes a progressive
evolution. The person reconstrues. This is experience.
Traditionally the knowledge embodied in curricula has been thought of as a
gradually expanding set of objective truths that it is the function of schools
(and for that matter colleges and universities) to transmit to their pupils (or
students). But the constructivist view casts doubt on the efficacy of transmis-
sion models of teaching and learning, preferring exploration and interpreta-
tion to recitation. This is not to deny the existence of knowledge independent
of individual knowers, or the possibility of basing curricula on such ‘external’
knowledge; but it is to insist that effective learning is more than a matter of
memorising what one is told.
The version of this argument contained in Barnes’s classic book From
Communication to Curriculum rests in part on the distinction he makes between
‘school knowledge’ and ‘action knowledge’. This is what he has to say about
these two kinds of knowledge:
School knowledge is the knowledge which someone else presents to us.
We partly grasp it, enough to answer the teacher’s questions, to do
exercises, or to answer examination questions, but it remains someone
else’s knowledge, not ours. If we never use this knowledge we probably
forget it. In so far as we use knowledge for our own purposes however
we begin to incorporate it into our view of the world, and to use parts of
it to cope with the exigencies of living. Once the knowledge becomes
incorporated into that view of the world on which our actions are based I
would say that it has become ‘action knowledge’. (Barnes, 1976: 81)
These words neatly capture one of the recurrent problems faced by educa-
tional systems: the production of learning that remains cut off from the rest of
learners’ lives. According to Barnes, pedagogical measures designed to
counteract this effect must engage learners in exploratory, interpretative
processes that allow them to bring their action knowledge to bear on the
school knowledge they are presented with. This has an immediate and
inevitable impact on classroom discourse, as it allows learners the freedom to
take a number of discourse initiatives that traditional pedagogies often deny
them
asking exploratory questions, making suggestions, challenging others’
statements, evaluating learning plans, tasks and outcomes. And new forms of
classroom discourse make it possible, at least in principle, to establish
continuity between the roles that learners play inside and outside the
classroom; for they seek to stimulate learners’ ‘active presence’, harness their
‘wilful agency’, accommodate their ‘demands and protests’, engage them in
‘negotiation’ and integrate their ‘personal agendas’ into the evolving learning
agenda of the classroom (cf. Salmon’s description of family life above).
20 Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching

According to this view, formal learning is maximally effective when it is

‘participatory, proactive, communal, collaborative, and given over to construct-
ing meanings rather than receiving them’ (Bruner, 1996: 84). This does not
mean, however, that anything goes. The purpose of education remains the
same as ever: to give learners access to the multifaceted culture into which they
have been born. Learners cannot construct their knowledge out of nothing,
neither can they know by instinct how to conduct focused and purposeful
learning conversations that shape themselves to the ways of thinking
characteristic of the subject in question. Teachers remain indispensable, both
as pedagogues and as discipline experts.
Classroom procedures that are participatory, proactive, communal and
collaborative are also of necessity reflective: every question asked and every
judgement made entails an act of self-conscious distancing from the object,
and sometimes also the process, of learning. This is what Bruner means when
he writes of the language of education:
It must express stance and must invite counter-stance and in the process
leave place for reflection, for metacognition. It is this that permits one to
reach higher ground, this process of objectifying in language or image
what one has thought and then turning around on it and reconsidering
it. (Bruner, 1986: 129)
For Bruner (1986: 132) a capacity for ‘reflective intervention’ is a defining
characteristic of what I would describe as an autonomous learner:
If he fails to develop any sense of what I shall call reflective intervention
in the knowledge he encounters, the young person will be operating
continually from the outside in
knowledge will control and guide him.
If he succeeds in developing such a sense, he will control and select
knowledge as needed. If he develops a sense of self that is premised on
his ability to penetrate knowledge for his own uses, and if he can share
and negotiate the result of his penetrations, then he becomes a member
of the culture-creating community.
The argument from constructivism may be summarised as follows. Each of
us constructs his or her own knowledge through the (unconscious, implicit)
interaction between what we already know and the new ideas, information
and experiences we encounter. In contexts of formal learning we should try to
assist the involuntary, unconscious construction of knowledge by adopting
pedagogical procedures that are exploratory, interpretative and participatory.
Such procedures allow learners to assume discourse roles that traditional
pedagogies deny them. Through the adoption of such roles learners begin to
take control of their own learning; at the same time they are necessarily drawn
into reflection on the content and processes of their learning. What Bruner calls
‘reflective intervention’ in knowledge confirms the learner’s status as an
autonomous member of the learning community.
How exactly does language come into the picture? Another way of
summarising the argument is to say that knowledge is constructed through
the learner’s involvement in linguistically mediated interactions, encoded in
language, and reproduced through one or another kind of communicative
Language Learner Autonomy Revisited 21

activity (speaking or writing). Besides being the tool with which we construct
knowledge, however, language is also the tool we use for the metacognitive/
metalinguistic processes of ‘reflective intervention’. The question then arises:
what are we to make of this argument when we are teachers of a second or
foreign language?

Theories of Language Learning

According to Ellis (2003: 63), constructivist theories of language acquisition
hold that simple learning mechanisms operating in and across human
systems for perception, motor action, and cognition while exposed to
language data in a communicatively rich human social environment
navigated by an organism eager to exploit the functionality of language
are sufficient to drive the emergence of complex language representa-
tions.
This summary contains one assumption and two claims. The assumption is
that language acquisition is a matter of developing complex language
representations in the brain. The first claim is that this does not require a
special language acquisition device but uses the same mechanisms as other
kinds of learning; and the second claim is that those mechanisms are activated
when language is used for purposes of communication (where communication
comprises reception, production, interaction and mediation in speech and
writing). Other theories of language acquisition assume the existence of an
innate language faculty (e.g. White, 2003), but they too emphasise the need for
input, interaction and output (e.g. Gass, 2003). In other words, constructivist
and innatist theories alike assign language use a key role in language learning.
Children do not first learn their mother tongue and then set about using
what they have learnt to communicate with their parents and siblings.
Rather, they gradually learn the language as a result of their efforts to
communicate; and their efforts to communicate are a manifestation of that
‘intersubjectivity’ I referred to earlier. The same is true of a migrant worker
‘picking up’ the language of his workmates as a result of his daily interaction
with them. Logic tells us that it should also be true of the way in which we
organise language learning in formal educational contexts, yet teachers and
learners persist in believing that it is possible to develop communicative
proficiency in a second or foreign language by doing almost anything but use
the language. All too often in language classrooms ‘language use’ is
interpreted to mean the recitation of scripted dialogues; and when it does
involve spontaneous talk, communication is all too often either one-way, from
teacher to learners, or requires only brief and formulaic learner contributions.
But while it is clear that learners need to interact with input they can
understand, it is also clear that their own efforts to communicate increasingly
complex messages in speech and writing play an essential role. As Swain
(2000: 99) has observed, output requires deeper language processing and
greater mental effort than input: ‘Output may stimulate learners to move from
22 Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching

the semantic, open-ended, strategic processing prevalent in comprehension to

the complete grammatical processing needed for accurate production’.
Child language development and other forms of naturalistic language
acquisition are driven by dialogue in which the learner is supported by more
expert speakers. Support
or scaffolding (Wood et al., 1976)
can take many
forms. When a baby is not yet capable of speech, parents and siblings typically
‘translate’ both sides of their reciprocal interactions into speech: their own
initiatives and the child’s responses, but also what they take to be the child’s
initiatives and their responses (another instance of intersubjectivity). In due
course conversations are built around the child’s one-word utterances, with
the more expert speakers providing elaboration and interpretation. And so it
goes on. Gradually the language generated by these reciprocal exchanges
becomes part of the child’s own mental resources.
This dialogic dynamic is characteristic not only of naturalistic language
acquisition but also (as we have seen) of the exploratory, interpretative
techniques that characterise constructivist pedagogy. Vygotsky’s notion of a
zone of proximal development (ZPD) captures essential features of both
situations. He defined the ZPD as
the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by
independent problem solving and the level of potential development as
determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in
collaboration with more capable peers. (Vygotsky, 1978: 86)
This definition assumes that learning is the result of doing, acknowledges the
role of expertise in guiding the learning process and identifies autonomy in the
sense of being able to do things for oneself (‘independent problem solving’) as
the goal of learning. The implication is that each time a particular learning goal
is achieved, what has been learnt provides the platform from which to launch
into the next ZPD. When we apply this metaphor not to language acquisition
but to learning in general, language still plays a central role, for it is the tool by
which the learning process is shaped and knowledge and skill are mediated.
This is a matter of spoken communication
describing and analysing the task
in hand, evaluating the merits of different approaches, giving instructions,
proposing alternatives, and so on; but it is also a matter of building internal
representations of the task and its performance that the learner can draw on in
future acts of independent task performance. This brings us to Vygotsky’s
view of the relationship between language and thought, or more accurately,
speaking and thinking.
According to sociocultural theory, higher psychological functions

voluntary attention, logical memory, the formation of concepts
are
internalised from social interaction: ‘An operation that initially represents an
external activity is reconstructed and begins to occur internally’ (Vygotsky,
1978: 56
57). In this way social speech (speaking with others) is internalised
first as egocentric speech (speaking aloud, but to and for oneself: ‘a process
internal in nature but external in manifestation’; Vygotsky, 1987: 258) and then
as inner speech (speaking internally, to and for oneself: ‘speech that is
psychologically inner and that functions in a manner analogous to external
egocentric speech’; p. 71). The transformations involved in this development
Language Learner Autonomy Revisited 23

are not straightforward; neither is the relation between speaking and thinking.
Lantolf (2000: 7) provides a useful summary:
Sociocultural theory argues that while separate, thinking and speaking
are tightly interrelated in a dialectic unity in which publicly derived
speech completes privately initiated thought. Thus, thought cannot be
explained without taking account of how it is made manifest through
linguistic means, and linguistic activities, in turn, cannot be under-
stood fully without ‘seeing them as manifestations of thought’.
(Bakhurst, 1991: 60)
The dialectic unity of speaking and thinking has not been a central concern
of research into second language acquisition, though it is clear that the
capacity for inner speech must be an integral part of any worthwhile second or
foreign language proficiency. We use inner speech in a multitude of ways: to
support all forms of reading and extensive listening, to plan the apology we
have to make for forgetting a friend’s birthday, to prepare ourselves for a
difficult interview by trying to anticipate the questions we shall be asked and
working out what our answers should be, and so on. How do we develop this
capacity for inner speech in the language classroom? By requiring learners not
only to take the initiative in determining learning goals and selecting learning
materials and activities, but to do this in the target language, and to use the
target language also for regular ‘reflective intervention’ in what they have
learnt and how they have learnt it. When they use the target language as the
medium of task performance but also of metacognition and metalinguistic
reflection, learners’ developing proficiency is an integral part of the autonomy
that arises from successful task performance. That, as it seems to me, is the
essential characteristic of language learner autonomy.

Pedagogical Implications
These considerations led me several years ago to propose that success in
second and foreign language teaching is governed by three interacting
principles: learner involvement, learner reflection and target language use
(Little, 1999, 2001). The principle of learner involvement requires that the
teacher draws her learners into their own learning process, making them share
responsibility for setting the learning agenda, selecting learning activities and
materials, managing classroom interaction and evaluating learning outcomes.
Learner involvement is not, of course, the result of a single pedagogical act but
a process that requires constant attention from the beginning to the end of the
course of learning. Few learners will arrive at their first class ready to take
complete charge of their own learning; for most, self-management in learning
will be something they have to learn, to begin with by taking very small steps.
The teacher’s task is to identify those areas in which she can require her
learners to take decisions from the first day; but she must also be quick to
relinquish control as soon as the learners are ready to take over in other areas.
Dam (1995) has provided us with a paradigmatic account of the techniques
and processes involved. It is important to recognise that the teacher has a
24 Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching

responsibility to intervene when her learners’ choices are leading them into a
blind alley, and especially when they are failing to set themselves ‘optimal
challenges’. And she must provide suggestions and procedures that lie beyond
their experience, cultivating a classroom dynamic that constantly lifts them to
new levels of effort and achievement.
In some contexts it is possible for the teacher to negotiate a curriculum
exclusively on the basis of her learners’ perceived needs, as in the English
language classes that Integrate Ireland Language and Training (www.iilt.ie)
provides for adult immigrants with refugee status. This is how one teacher
went about constructing a 17-week curriculum for a class of learners with little
or no English. She decided that she needed 13 topics, so she made up a set of
20 pictures, each of which illustrated an aspect of life in Ireland: the corner
shop, the doctor’s surgery, a parent
teacher meeting at school, going to the
bank, and so on. She then gave each of her 15 learners three coloured stickers
and invited them to put one sticker on each of the topics that they most wanted
to deal with. The 13 pictures with the most stickers determined the main
themes for the term. The other pictures/topics were not ignored, however; the
teacher left them on the classroom wall so that they too could be referred to
whenever possible as the term unfolded.
Teaching the language of the host community to adult immigrants is
obviously a special case. The great majority of language teachers, certainly in
schools, are obliged to shape their courses according to official curriculum
guidelines, sometimes elaborated in great detail. But this in no way under-
mines the principle of learner involvement, for two reasons. First, each teacher
will necessarily have her own understanding of the curriculum and her own
approach to its delivery. Writing from the perspective of Kelly’s personal
construct psychology (see above, p. 6), Salmon (1988: 37) argues that ‘you are
yourself, in some sense, what you teach’:
One teacher’s Spanish is not the Spanish of her colleague; though the
syllabus may be the same, the lessons are not. What gives importance,
value, vitality to one person’s material is hers alone; and it is this
or its
absence
which is the real substance of her teaching.
Secondly, whereas the curriculum itself may not be negotiable, how precisely
its goals are pursued certainly is. In my adult immigrant example the teacher
must help her learners to answer the question: what English is it most urgent
for us to learn in order to cope with life in Ireland? In a secondary classroom
the question is rather: given the goals of the French curriculum, how are we
going to achieve them?
The principle of learner reflection is already implied by the principle of
learner involvement. It is after all impossible to set a learning target, select
learning activities and materials, or evaluate learning outcomes without
thinking about what you are doing. But the principle of learner reflection
also requires us to embrace ‘reflective intervention’ as a key feature of the
teaching
learning process. That is, we must supplement the incidental
reflection that planning, monitoring and evaluating learning entail by an
explicitly detached reflection on the process and content of learning. This too
depends on skills that learners have to acquire gradually, from very modest
Language Learner Autonomy Revisited 25

beginnings. The very word ‘reflection’ is potentially misleading here, because

it can easily conjure up an image of classrooms full of silent learners with
furrowed brows, each struggling to understand the mystery of his or her
cognitive and metacognitive processes. In fact, of course, the kind of reflection
we are concerned with here begins in dialogue between teacher and learners
or within learner groups as an enactment of Bruner’s ‘language of education’
(see above); and following Vygotsky’s principle of internalisation, what begins
as social speech is gradually transformed into the capacity for inner speech
(or discursive thinking) in the target language.
The principle of target language use entails quite simply that the target
language is the medium through which all classroom activities are conducted,
organisational and reflective as well as communicative. It is, of course, on this
principle that the fullest possible integration of learner autonomy with target
language proficiency depends. Teachers often object that it is impossible for
learners to use the target language to organise and (especially) reflect on their
learning. But this is clearly not the case, as is shown by the experience of, for
example, Dam (1995), Thomsen (2000, 2003), Thomsen and Gabrielsen (1991)
and Integrate Ireland Language and Training (Little, forthcoming). In the early
stages much depends on the teacher’s capacity to scaffold her interactions
with the class, groups of learners and individuals; but as Thomsen (2003) has
shown, when learners have achieved a level of proficiency that enables them to
conduct intensive group work in the target language, they are also capable of
applying metalinguistic concepts to the analysis of the target language and
their own output.
The key to successful implementation of the principle of target language use
lies in the effective use of group work and the appropriate use of writing.
Group work is essential because it is only by working in small groups that
learners can engage in intensive interactive use of the target language

following Vygotskian principles, we predict that language produced inter-
actively gradually becomes part of the individual learner’s internalised mental
resources (Swain, 2000; Thomsen, 2003). Groups mostly choose activities that
end with the production of some kind of written output: a story, a report of
some kind, the script of a short play, a collection of poems or songs. But from
time to time the teacher may also encourage them to work on projects that
bring the forms of the target language into focus, for example, the ambitious
vocabulary learning project described by Thomsen (2003). Thus some of the
activities learners choose are similar to those pursued in task-based learning
(Skehan, 1998, 2003), except that the learners themselves devise the tasks; while
other activities recall form-focused instruction (Doughty & Williams 1998),
except that the learners themselves decide which forms to focus on.
Some language teaching traditions, notably the audiolingual and audio-
visual methods, have insisted that listening and speaking should be developed
before reading and writing. But this is to deny learners one of the most useful
supports for learning of any kind: writing things down. It also excludes the
use of writing to construct longer texts ‘offline’ when learners’ oral proficiency
is such that they find it difficult to produce complex oral utterances. In
autonomous classrooms writing has been used in three ways: to make posters
that summarise learning plans or list useful vocabulary, idioms or grammatical
26 Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching

structures; to maintain journals or logbooks in which learners capture the

process and progress of their learning; and to produce various kinds of written
text as the output of group projects. In each of these modes what is written
down can be used to support speaking; at the same time speaking helps to
generate what is written down. Also, the use of writing from the beginning
facilitates focus on linguistic form: as Olson has observed, there is an
important sense in which literacy is metalinguistic activity (Olson, 1991).
In formal learning generally learner journals have been promoted as
vehicles for reflection and self-evaluation (e.g. Kent, 1997; Moon, 1999). But
when language learners keep journals in their target language, using them to
capture all their learning, journals move to the very centre of the learning
process. Cumulatively the journal becomes the story of the individual’s
language learning, illustrating the gradual expansion of identity that comes
with developing proficiency in a second or foreign language. It is worth
mentioning here the Council of Europe’s European Language Portfolio (ELP;
Little, 2002) as a particular kind of learner journal that is divided into three
parts: a language passport, a language biography and a dossier. The ELP
provides checklists of ‘I can’ statements for listening, reading, spoken
interaction, spoken production and writing, scaled according to the common
proficiency levels of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages
(CEFR; Council of Europe, 2001; see also Little, 2006). The checklists are used
to select learning goals, monitor progress and evaluate outcomes. This
formalisation of the role played by self-assessment in the autonomous
language classroom has great potential for future development: as more and
more assessment systems align themselves with the proficiency levels defined
in the CEFR, the ELP offers us the chance to develop assessment cultures that
accommodate self-assessment and value learner autonomy (Little, 2005).

Conclusion
The central argument of this paper may be summarised as follows. Learner
autonomy is the product of an interactive process in which the teacher
gradually enlarges the scope of her learners’ autonomy by gradually allowing
them more control of the process and content of their learning. In classrooms
as well as in naturalistic contexts communicative proficiency in a second or
foreign language is also the product of an interactive process. Thus when
language learner autonomy is an educational goal, we must devise an
interactive dynamic that simultaneously develops communicative proficiency
and learner autonomy: autonomy in language learning and autonomy in
language use are two sides of the same coin.
I began the theoretical part of my argument with Holec’s universally
accepted definition of learner autonomy, then summarised motivational and
cognitive arguments in favour of learner autonomy. After that I described
constructivist approaches to pedagogy, went on to consider what they imply
when the object of learning is a second or foreign language, and ended by
spelling out some of the pedagogical implications of my position. The
argument can also be conducted in reverse order, starting with the discourse
Language Learner Autonomy Revisited 27

dynamic required to promote language learning, which requires us to grant

learners freedoms that can be sustained only if they take charge of their own
learning. This fact confirms, as it seems to me, that language learner autonomy
is not an optional extra, sometimes required by the way in which learning is
organised, but belongs at the very centre of language teaching theory and
practice. In this regard it is important to insist that my argument is not merely
speculative. On the contrary, it is an attempt at a principled exploration of
pedagogical realities that have existed for the past quarter of a century. The
things that I propose teachers should do in their classrooms have been tried
and tested in a number of countries, especially in northern Europe (e.g. Aase et
al ., 2000; Dam, 1995, 2000; Little, forthcoming; Thomsen 2000, 2003; Thomsen
& Gabrielsen, 1991).
Finally, it is necessary to draw attention to the implications of my argument
for teacher development. In a paper published more than 10 years ago I argued
that the development of learner autonomy depends on the development of
teacher autonomy (Little, 1995). By this I meant two things: first, that it is
unreasonable to expect teachers to foster the growth of autonomy in their
learners if they themselves do not know what it is to be an autonomous
learner; and secondly, that in determining the initiatives they take in the
classroom, teachers must be able to exploit their professional skills auto-
nomously, applying to their teaching those same reflective and self-managing
processes that they apply to their learning. It now seems to me that there is a
third requirement: teachers must learn how to produce and manage the many
varieties of target language discourse required by the autonomous classroom.
This is a major challenge, but until teacher educators rise to it, language
learner autonomy as I have defined it in this paper will remain a minority
achievement.

Correspondence
Any correspondence should be directed to Professor David Little, School of
Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences, Centre for Language and
Communication Studies, Arts Building, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
([email protected]).

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