Instructional Intervention and Learner Autonomy

Professor Koichi Nishiguchi
Osaka University

Koichi discussed how autonomy in language performance develops and raised one of the most crucial issues within the sociocultural study of second language development, namely, its lack of a sound theoretical psycholinguistic basis.

Koichi examined theoretically the expected role of the teachers in engaging learners in different communicative practices. For instance, he remarked on Bakhtin’s (1981) assumption, which in accord with Vygotsky’s (1987) theory of psychological development, that human mental development is rooted in the social interaction with other people. He also noted that Bakhtin’s conceptualization is directly related to Holoquist and Emerson’s (1981: 434) conceptualization of ‘voice’ that is simply ‘speaking personality, speaking consciousness’ (ibid.). From Koichi’s point of view, to nurture this kind of voice with second language words as the material within the learner with respect to particular activity domains is of importance in terms of second language development.

As these voices will be nurtured via internalization of specific speech acts that were experienced in the context of particular interactive practice, Koichi remarked that learners need sufficient opportunities to engage in interactive practices in particular domains of activity and require experiences in which they produce their own speech acts in a specific concrete situation that engenders utterances.

According to Koichi, learners need to “undergo these experiences with an active and optimal support and optimal support and assistance by more capable communicators including the teacher. It is these experiences that form an important site of second language development, i.e., an important site in which each learner grows to be a more autonomous and capable language speaker.”

During the Q&A, a question was raised asking how teachers would be able to observe the interactions. Koichi suggested that a good way to start would be videotaping the class and then watch the video with the students and discuss with them. A practice as such was also described by one of the keynote speakers, Dr. Klaus Schwienhorst, whose presentation on ‘Coming to terms: Learner autonomy, the learner and (computer-assisted) language learning environments’ suggested letting students evaluate their own learning through watching their learning video as a means to help them reflect on their learning.

I was inspired by this talk and temped to try out this approach. However, a couple of questions struck me while I ruminated over how it could be deployed in my class. Would this approach succeed with a larger class / group of students? To what extent would students willingly talk about their learning with their classmates or their teacher? Even though I have these questions in mind, I do look forward to exploring this approach further and searching for the answer(s).

References

Bakhtin, M. M. (1981) The Dialogic Imaginations: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin, Holquist, M. (ed.), (1981), translated by Emerson, C. and Holquist, M. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Holoquist, M. and Emerson, C. (1981) Glossary for The Dialogic Imaginations: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin, Holquist, M. (ed.), (1981), translated by Emerson, C. and Holquist, M. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1987) Thinking and Speech. In Rieber, R. W. and Carton, A. S. (eds.) (1986) The Collected Works of L. S. Vygotsky. Volume 1. New York: Plenum.

Learner autonomy and CALL: An activity theoretical perspective

Presenter: Dr. Françoise Blin, Dublin City University, Ireland

Françoise was attracted to Activity Theory initially because she felt that the field of learner autonomy was becoming stagnant. Would we ever go beyond simply talking about “learners taking more responsibility”? Françoise was interested in learning how you could measure learner autonomy and how you could know whether learners are becoming more autonomous. In addition, she wasn’t satisfied with the current theories of computer-assisted language learning. What IS the role of the computer? Is it really just a tool?

Activity theory has its origins in sociocultural theory and it basically refers to looking at “actions towards an outcome mediated by tools”. Tools in this case can be technology tools or language. Françoise referred to both as cognitive tools. She draws on the work of Engeström (1987) to bring in community and the object of the activity which is useful for taking a snapshot of learning at a particular time.

Françoise talked a lot about tensions, contradictions and conflicts within activities. From a learner autonomy perspective, this is the relationship between independence and interdependence and between the individual and the social.

Françoise made the distinction between a technology tool and a virtual learning environment (VLE). She argued that a VLE is not a tool, but a context, and a useful context for capturing interaction and data across timescales. She described a project whereby a group of 38 Irish learners of French were required to participate in a project where they created a website in teams making use of a VLE. Artifacts, such as diaries, notes and reports were studied and applied to a grid in order to identify evidence of learner autonomy. Each artifact was coded according to one of 4 categories: action, content, manifestation and contradiction.

What Françoise found was that the more autonomous students used the object (the website they were creating and the VLE) as a tool to do something else and were more adventurous. The less autonomous individuals used mote traditional, familiar tools. There were some problems with this project in that the teacher and the students had different perceptions as to the aim of the exercise. This was taken into account in subsequent projects.

Comments

Activity theory is a difficult area to get your head around initially, and Françoise is the only person I know who is applying it in this unique way, but it does seem to be useful. The “snapshot” in time idea is a very clever one. It is also very insightful to study how students are using tools available to them in order to evaluate how autonomous they are. It doesn’t have to be a VLE. Studying how a student might be using a textbook, or materials in a self-access center would also give a good indication of how autonomous a student is.

Reference

Engestrom, Y. (1987). Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to
developmental research. Helsinki: Orieta-Konsultit.