Changing
Attitudes:

Fluency-focused
Speaking
Practice
Emika Abe
Daito Bunka University
emika@bronze.ocn.ne.jp

In this research project, I wanted to help my students get used to speaking English, toraise theirawareness of theirown learningprocesses, and tofacilitate theirmotivation
tospeak. I undertook thestudywith28first-year English-major studentsat a Japanese
university. Each speaking practice took about 30-35 minutes of their weekly 90minute class, with thestudents following four steps: viewinga shortvideo, speaking
about the video in English, reflecting on their own performances in Japanese, andgettingfeedback from theteacher inJapanese. Such practice gave mystudents chances
to tryout various strategies, with theoverall process ofguidedpractice and reflection
raising mystudents' awareness of theirown learning. I alsogained interesting insights
into how mystudents perceived thevalue of such classroom learning.
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Introduction

I have been teaching first-year English-major studentsat Daito BunkaUniversity for the past 5
years. Although my students were highly motivated to learn English since they chose to major
in English, they seemed reluctant to engage in pair work or to speak in Englishwith their peers.
I noticed some students started speaking Japaneseas soon as they were assigned to do pairwork. Others just remained quiet. They told me that they could not speak English to each otherbecause they did not know how to describe certain things in English and because they did nothave anything to say to their peers even in Japanese.

My observations told me that they were simply not ready for pair work yet. They had not
had enough prior speaking practice. I thought they needed an extended structured experiencein which they could feel comfortable speaking in English before I encouraged them to practice
speaking English more freely with their peers. I therefore started to develop a series of guided
activities that enabled them to work individually and to overcome their hesitation to speak
English in pairs.
I felt that raising awareness of my students' learning processes might be necessary to help
them develop speaking abilities for better interpersonal communication in English. I believedthat they should be given the space in which to find their own 'helpless' learning habits and tochange them to better ones through new positive experiences. To decide how to design the newactivity sequence, I first looked at different theoretical definitions of learner autonomy.
Holec (1981) describes autonomy as "the ability to take charge of one's learning" (p. 3),
whereas Little (2000) claims that "the language learner-user will become gradually moreautonomous only through the practice of autonomy" (p. 15). In fact, Scharle and Szabo (2000)
classify autonomy-developing activities into three groups.
First, the learners have to become aware of the difference their contribution can make,and of the nature of language learning in general (Raising awareness). Second, theyneed some well-structured practice in their new attitudes as responsible learners(Changing attitudes) so that, in the third phase, they will be ready to take over someroles from the teacher and enjoy the freedom that comes with increased responsibility(Transferring roles), (p. 1)
Their three-way classification was useful for me in understanding how to help students
become aware of their learning processes and give them opportunities to practice new learned
skills. However, I also noticed that theoretical discussions of learner autonomy make animportant distinction between different types of autonomous practice. Littlewood (1999), forexample, classifies autonomy into proactive and reactive autonomy, commenting that:.. .the first regulates the direction of activity as well as the activity itself. The second
regulates the activity once the direction has been set. Proactive autonomy is the formof autonomy that is usually intended when the concept is discussed in the West.. .it isuseful to consider also a second kind of autonomy, which may either be a preliminary
step towards the first or a goal in its own right, (p. 75)
Littlewood argues that East Asian learners "will have experienced few learning contexts
which encourage them to exercise individual proactive autonomy" (p. 87), but states that suchlearners are ready to accept activities based on reactive autonomy.
From considering such theoretical claims in the light of my own experiences, I designed asimple, easy-to-follow, well-structured, video-based activity called fluency-focused speaking— LD SIG 2003 A n t h o l o g y —89*Changing A t t i t u d e spractice. Like it or not, students had to follow the procedure of the activity. This activity did
not allow students to choose which videos they would watch, but it did let them choose how totake notes, and what to speak about. There was, in this sense, a small but limited space for themto try out their own choices. My basic philosophy was that, once they became more familiar
with autonomy development, they would be able to take much greater responsibility for theirown learning. Indeed, I had conducted this kind of speaking practice in my speaking andlistening classes over the last few years. Every year I changed a few points based on the students'
comments, my own reflections, and other teachers' comments to make the activity more
effective. So, this chapter presents my most recent understanding and development with regard
to this type of structured 'reactive' autonomy.
The Focus of My Project
My goals were to enable students to get used to speaking English, to raise their awareness oflearning processes, to facilitate their motivation to speak, and to provide them with opportuni
ties to practice skills they had just learned. I carried out my research project over a period offive weeks in June and July 2003 with 28 first-year English-major students in Daito Bunka Uni
versity aged 18-20. Eighteen of the students were female, and 10 male.
Procedure

The speaking practice consisted of three parts. The pre-activity stage focused on explaining thereasons for introducing this new activity. This was followed over 5 weeks by the main speaking
practice activity, before student feedback was gathered through a questionnaire.
Pre-activity: A Lecture

Taking about 45 minutes, the main purpose of the lecture was to motivate students to speak. In
English and occasionally in Japanese, I explained various points that they should know aboutdeveloping their listening and speaking ability in English.

First, I wanted to make students aware that lack of practice in junior and senior highschool had resulted in their present poor speaking performances. In their junior and seniorhigh school days, they were not trained to speak out in class; instead, they concentrated on
mastering grammatical knowledge and memorizing new vocabulary to pass the entrance
examinations for university. According to a survey of my students' English education
background conducted in April 2003, 64 % of them had taken oral communication classes oncea week in senior high school. Only 17% had had such classes twice a week. As for the content of
their pre-university classes,only nine students (32 %) clearly stated they had experienced some
sort of conversation class. The rest had studied English grammar, listened to what their teacher
said in English, watched English movies, and studied everydayvocabulary and expressions.
These students had little experience of practicing speaking. Seventeen percent of the students
did not have any oral communication classes in senior school at all. That's why I needed to help
them understand better ways to develop listening and speaking.
The second part of the lecture introduced two concepts for measuring speaking to helpchange students' attitudes toward better speaking. One was accuracy, or how precisely you canspeak English. Here I explained that, when people worry about accuracy too much, they often
stop the conversation to look for the right words. Sometimes this action causes conversation
breakdown. The listener might then misunderstand the speaker's intent and wrongly believethat the speaker does not want to talk to the listener. I emphasized this point because JapaneseAutonomy You

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students tend to try to over-monitor their accuracy while speaking English.
The other part of my focus was fluency, or how quickly you can speak English. Students
need to practice speaking in order to reach a certain fluency level.While practicing, they haveto break through their hesitation, fear, and reticence to change years of speaking habits. I
wanted my students to understand and accept that it is OK to make mistakes when they speak.
It is difficult for my students to monitor both accuracy and fluency at the same time.
They tend to worry more about the correctness of what they are saying. This habit prevents
them from speaking a lot. Thus, the fluency-focused practice was focused on speaking a large
quantity of words within a given time limit. Students had to push themselves to speak as many
words as possible on to a tape in individual speaking practice.

Before explaining the speaking practice itself, I showed a 2-minute Kipper video and asked
them if they were able to talk about the episode in English. I gave them a few minutes to recall
the video. Then, I played the model tape in which last year's best student spoke about thesame episode. Students were surprised at how fluently the model student spoke, at a rate of 96
words per minute. I explained that, by noticing the actual number of words they each spoke,
they would gradually be able to make a connection between their sense of speaking fluency
and their total output. This discrete form of consciousness-raising would, I hope, also enable
them to imagine how their speaking would develop by the end of the 5-week practice. I also
pointed out to the students that newscasters in English news speak from 130 to 160 words per
minute on average (JACET Kansai Listening Test Kenkyukai, 2000). Since students often watch
English news in class, they could readily understand how quickly newscasters speak. Although
the ultimate goal for all students learning English might be to reach native speaker fluency,that remains a remote point of comparison for my first-year students. That's why I told themthat their goals for this speaking practice should simply focus on trying to match the model
student's English speech rate.
Speaking Practice

Each speaking practice took about 30-35 minutes of the 90-minute class in a fully equipped
language lab. For the rest of the class,the focus was on listening. Students practiced listening
using a textbook.

The speaking practice was divided into the following four stages:
1. viewing a video (two viewings of 2 minutes each) and talking in pairs (3 minutes);
2. recording themselves talking about the video (1 minute) and dictating this (10minutes);

3. reflecting on their own performances (5 minutes);
4. getting feedback from the teacher (7 minutes).
I. Viewing a video and talking in pairs

While watching the 2-minute video twice, students were encouraged to take notes in Japaneseor English. After the first viewing, they talked about the video in pairs in either Japanese or
English for 3 minutes. What language they used was up to the pairs. They could exchange
information about what they understood and what they did not. If students had words they did
not know how to say in English, they could use this time to ask their partners. For the second
viewing, they tried to catch words or phrases they could utilize in their own speaking.

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II. Speaking about the video and dictating

Using notes, students recorded the story in their own words for a minute. They then listened
to their own tape and wrote down exactly what they had said. After the self-dictation, theycounted the number of the words they had spoken and recorded this number.
III. Reflection on their performances

Students were asked to reflect in Japanese on their performances and on the basic issue of
how to improve fluency. In this process of self-reflection, students had to notice problems
with their own speaking habits. In order to overcome such individual difficulties, they wereencouraged to set an attainable goal for their next practice. In addition to this, they wrote
down Japanese words and phrases that they could not explain in English. These individual listsof vocabulary became a useful resource for the whole class when I pulled them together andshowed them to everyone.
In the student reflections from the previous year, some students had commented thatthey had something they wanted to describe, but they did not know how to say it in English.
They had felt frustrated. Most of their self-reflections focused on this lack of vocabulary thathindered them from speaking more. I thought this was partially true. However, it takes time
to develop working vocabulary. This was too broad a goal for a 5-week speaking practice, so I
wanted them to find another small action that they could easily try. Thus, this year I decided
to give them the list of words that their reflections suggested they were having difficulty with.
After they filled out words and expressions in their reflection worksheet, I gave them the listof words. This enabled them to check the English words and expressions that they needed
immediately. As a result, they were no longer frustrated by a lack of vocabulary.
IV. Getting feedback from the teacher

The following week, I gave the students individualfeedback. My feedback consisted of two parts.
The first part was reflection-focused. Comments such as"In order to increase vocabulary, what
will you do? Write a concrete plan." pointed students to the absenceof specific plans to solvethe
individual problemsthat theyhad noticed, while other comments like"Next time you willfocus on
how totake notes, won't you?" helped students confirm what actions to take next. In order to sharestudents' reflections, I compiled a list of ideaswritten by students and gave this to the whole class.
After reading these through, the students wereencouraged to talk in pairs in Japaneseand to find asuitable action to address problems / challenges / difficulties identified in the list of reflections. Both
my written feedback and the shared discussion of student-generated ideaswereaimed at raising
their consciousness of howto manage theirspeaking development more autonomously.
The second part of my feedback was motivation-focused. Students were informed aboutboth the average number of words used across the whole class and the most number of words
used by the quickest-speaking student from the previous week. This information enabled themto compare their performances with their peers.
Post-activity: The Feedback Questionnaire

After the 5-week practice, I gave the students a written questionnaire in Japanese (see theAutonomy You Ask! website for Appendix A). It took 15 minutes to complete. Two yes/noquestions, one multiple-choice question and two open-ended questions were included. This
questionnaire was designed not only to probe students' feelings and attitudes toward the
speaking activity, but also to explore their willingness to learn more.
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Time Allocation

I decided to spend no more than 30 minutes of each 90-minute class on the weekly speaking
practice activity, since I had some other things to cover. One time, I showed 5-minute videos tostudents because I thought they would have more things to talk about if the video segment was
longer. I wanted to offer more choices to students. But things turned out completely differently
to what I had expected! Students claimed that the longer story made them confused. Because it
already took 10 minutes to view a 5-minute video twice, we could not finish the whole speaking
practice in 30 minutes. I decided to revert to showing 2-minute video segments only.
Materials

When I originally designed this activity, I had several choices of materials for students to talkabout, including showing a picture, giving a topic, and reading to students. My students haddifficulty talking with their peers in English. Thus, I wanted to give them English information
they could use for their speaking. With audio-visual aids, they did not have to worry about
what to speak about. In addition, students were involved in listening activities for the rest of theclass. This speaking practice could be a link to other activities. English children's videos werechosen for this activity because the stories are not complicated, and everyday words are used
often.

Over the past few years, I had tried using different types of videos (see the Autonomy You
Ask! website for Appendix B) and had got feedback from students on their usefulness. In theselection of the videos, I have learnt that it is important to consider the difficulty of the videos
in terms of vocabulary use and complexity of the plot. Since some videos like Snoopy usedunfamiliar words and dialogue that was too fast, students understood little even if they watched
them, twice and checked the content with their peers. They said they had nothing to describe
in their speaking practice and were very frustrated. From students' comments and my own
observations, I concluded that the Snoopy story was not appropriate for this type of activity.
Regarding familiar stories like Totoro, some students commented that the familiarity of thestory prevented them from concentrating on listening to English.When they spoke English,
they only came up with the Japanese plot, and it took them too much time to change fromJapanese to English. In order for students to concentrate on watching and listening to the video,
I felt that an unfamiliar story was better than a familiar one.
Some students liked to watch an ongoing story because they became familiar with thecharacters and tried to predict the stories before they watched the new episode. From thisstudy, I can conclude that suitable materials for speaking practice are ones that have easyplots,
a moderate rate of speech, and continuous stories. Therefore, I chose to use the Kipper story
this year. From Weeks 1 to 4, students watched an episode called The Visitor. In Week 5, they
watched the beginning part of a new episode called Snowy Day.
Results & Discussion

Three different types of data collected from students' worksheets and the feedbackquestionnaire are presented in this section. First,a chart of the number of words spoken eachweek is discussed to check students' progress. Secondly, the individual data for one student,
including transcripts of his speaking, his weekly reflections, and the teacher's comments tothem, give you an overview of his performance and reflection process. Thirdly, the data fromthe feedback questionnaire is examined to show students' reactions to this project.

LD SIG 2003 A n t h o l o g y —93* Changing A t t i t u d e s . . .

Figure 1below shows the number of words spoken each week. The highest line in the graphshows the most number of words spoken each week by an individual student. This starts at

71 words per week and rises to 137 by Week 5. In contrast to this highest speaking rate, theaverage number of words spoken by students isshown by the line with squares (going from37 in Week 1 to 71 in Week 5). To see how these across-class averages closelymirror individual
performance, I have included the weekly speaking totals of one student, Hiroshi (see the linewith triangles). Moreover, in order to show the range of performance across the whole class, thebottom line in the graph gives the average speaking rate of the slowest speaking student (goingfrom 12 in Week 1 to 32 in Week 5).

Figure 1 Average speaking rates over 5 weeks
All four lines show positive development. The highest speaking rate in Week 5 reaches 137
words per minute, which is equal to the average English newscasters' speaking rate. This is quite
beyond my expectations, and I feel very proud of this student's weeldy performance! Looking
into the individual data in Week 5, another student spoke 131 words per minute. These two
students had high speaking rates (71 and 69 respectively) from the beginning. It seems thatthey already had some sense of speaking fluency, which they were enabled to develop more
effectively The average number of words spoken by students starts at 37 in Week 1 and finishes
at 71 in Week 5—about half of highest students' rate. It seems that the average students reachthe highest student's starting point after 5 weeks of practice. Overall, the increases in speaking
rates indicate that such practice helps students improve their fluency.

In addition to looking at Hiroshi's speaking totals quantitatively, we can also understandthe process of autonomous speaking and listening development by considering his weekly
transcripts in full. This lets us see the typical development that most students go through.
Hiroshi's transcripts are shown in Table 1 below.

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Table 1 Hiroshi's Transcripts from the 5-week Speaking Practice (with total number ofwords also shown)

Week

Transcripts of Hiroshi's speaking practiceTotal words

1

One night, Kipper was sleeping in basket. It was thunder and duck comeKipper's home. So, Kipper take in duck and let duck sleep but the box
was not comfortable. So, Kipper bring slipper and duck fell asleep. Then
Kipper turn offthe lightand himselfslept.

47

2

Morning has came. They, Kipper wake upandsay theduck goodmorning. They were sleep, sleeping together. The room was dirty so Kipper

73

cleaned the room with brush and bucket. The duck started to swim in thebucket. Kipper was stop him and he let him swim in bath. Thekipper takein Kipper's plasticduck. And he let they in bath, and wondering to makebreakfast. But the duckand...
3

Kipper and duck were eating breakfast. Duckdidn't knowhow to eat
cornflake. So, Kipper showhim to eat cornflake. But, duck couldn't eat.
So, the clean was became so dirty. So Kipper clean thefloor. Duck bringhis toys and Kipper vacuum it. But Kipper thought he vacuum duck.

53

He...
4

Duck bring book and Kipper read it. There were sheeps, lamb, pig, chick,andgoose. The duck wasa goose. It couldfly to thestorm. And thefriendsof thegoose come nearthe Kipper's house. It waslike a book. Andgoose
fly away, but comeonce to theKipper and saygood-bye. Andfly away.
Kipper feel sad.

62

5

It wassnowing. Kipper wassleeping in his room, and woke up and open
window and he said "Yes" again and again. Then hego out withput
muffler and run around his house. Andate snow, make snowball. He wasplayingalone. And then meethisfriend, Tiger and they play with usingsnow. They really enjoy it. Tiger saidwarm weather will come soon. The
Kipper looks so sad. He want toplay with snow.

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Note: Hiroshi's transcripts have not been corrected.
While we can see from Table 1 that Hiroshi has increased the length of his transcripts overthe 5 weeks, it is also important to note that Hiroshi's process of development is gradual.
Table 2 below shows Hiroshi's weekly reflections and teacher's responses to them given in thefollowing week. The self-reflectionsand responseswere originally written in Japanese, so I havetranslated them into English.

LD SIG 2003 A n t h o l o g y —95*Changing A t t i t u d e sTable 2 Hiroshi's Self-reflections and Teacher Responses

Week

Teacher's responses

Hiroshi's reflections

1

I must get more information by taking
notes in detail while watching video.

That's a good point. You will focus on
how to take notes next time, won't you?

2

I had many things I wanted to explain, but Your fluency had improved a lot. In order
I could not finish all in a minute. Thus I
to improve your speaking speed, you needneeded to practice speaking English words to practice reading aloud or shadowing.
much faster. Of course, I had better start

speaking as soon as possible.
3

My total had decreased. I should study
What were the differences between youruseful expressions. When I had something actions of week 3 and week 2?
I could not explain in English, I need tothink of other ways to express similar
meanings.

4

When you had the words you did notunderstand, why don't you ask yourwords of baby animals. This prevented me partner?
from speaking more.
In this episode, I could not take notes
much. Moreover, I did not catch the

I thought carefully about how to respond to the students' reflections in my comments
because I wanted to encourage students to continue this activity willingly. For example, in
Week 2,1 praised Hiroshi's effort not only to encourage him, but also to assure him that he
was on the right track. Through my comments, I also wanted to suggest to individual students
how they could set their own goals in a way that would make them readily achievable thefollowing week. For example, in Week 1, Hiroshi found his problem was note-taking skills,but
his reflection was too vague. He did not articulate any concrete idea about what to do next, so
I wrote a comment to call his attention to something specific he could think about changing—his way of taking notes.
Table 3 below shows how useful the students felt such speaking practice was for them.
Students could choose from 11 discrete features characterizing the structured practice. They
were allowed to choose as many features as they wanted to; they could also add any otherfeatures that they felt were important, as well as comment freely on the reasons for theirchoices.

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Table 3 Perceived Usefulness of the Structured Listening and Speaking

Number of

2. What activities were useful for you?

responses

Percentageof responsesa) Listening to a lecture about accuracy and fluency

9

32.1

b) Listening to a model speaking tape by a former student

27.1c) Viewing videos

7

25.0

d) Taking notes

13

46.4

e) Talking with your partner before speaking

8

28.5

f) Listening to your own speaking

19

67.8

g) Self-reflection

14

50.0

h) Making use of a list of difficult words and phrases given by

14

50.0

i) Thinking about a shared list of self-reflections

5

17.8

j) Receiving comments on self-reflection from the teacher

7

25.0

k) Being informed of the average number of words and themost number of words used by students in the class

10

35.7

the teacher

1) Other (

)

0

0

Students judged that listening to their own speaking was the most useful experience forthem, with comments from two students suggesting specific ways in which this was helpful.
Student A noted that she became aware of the awkwardness of her long pauses by listening to
her own voice. She concluded that this new sense of awkwardness motivated her to speak more.
Student B's own voice shocked him because he realized how poor his pronunciation was. Hispoor pronunciation hindered him from dictating smoothly what he had recorded on his tape.
Instead, he had to rewind the tape and listen to parts of it several times. This experience led
him to pay much greater attention to his pronunciation.

Self-reflection and making use of difficult words and phrases given by the teacher were seenas the second most useful activities:• I can reflect myselfandplanfor thenextpractice.
•/ can refresh my memory when I read my reflection before the nextpractice.

• / used toforget about the activities in class right after Ifinished them. It was myfirsttime to think consciously whatI did in the activities and toplan ahead.
These comments all highlight the benefits of self-reflection in terms of students being able
to remember and build on what they had done in the previous class. This suggests that mystudents understood the importance of reflection and that the experience of reflecting on theirown speaking was of positive effect for them. Students were also positive about how the change
I had made helped them with learning and using vocabulary:— LD SIG 2003 A n t h o l o g y —97*Changing Attitudes .

• / usually neglect looking unknown words up in the dictionary at home even ifI promised
myself to doso in class. Mynegligence prevents mefrom developing English vocabulary I
need. In this practice, I could easily check English words andphrases I needed.

•

With a listof words andphrases, I can remember a lotof new words andphrases.

Whereasa lot of students still claimed that the lack of needed vocabulary prevented themfrom speaking more, they also reported that they had become aware of how helpfulsuch
vocabulary-building support was.
Concluding Insights

As we have seen, the number of words that individual students spoke increased. Students could
easily see their progress and, using this simple measurement, evaluate their own performance.
Through my feedback, students could also check their peers' progress as well. This sense of
self-evaluation assured them that they were on the right track and enhanced students' selfmotivation.

This gave students the opportunity to try consciously various actions to develop theirspeaking fluency. These included describing small parts of the story in detail instead ofsummarizing the whole story, skipping the parts that they could not describe immediately, andspeaking faster than before. In the process of self-reflection, students recalled what they did in
the last practice, judged whether their actions were appropriate, and planned what they would
do for the next practice. Immediately after experiencing the success or failure of one action,
they were able to choose and try a different one. If this new action worked for them, students
could practice it over and over until they internalized it. This process raised students' awarenessof their own learning and provided ample opportunities for practice, leading to importantchanges in their attitudes.
At the end of the 5-week practice, it was striking how the students no longer hesitated to
speak English and how they noticed the importance of fluency in communication. In addition,
they realized that the more they practiced speaking English, the better their fluency became.
When they finally gain much greater fluency in the future, they will be much more confident
about presenting their own opinions in English.
In order to design this autonomy-developing activity, I employed Scharle and Szabo's 3wayclassification as my guidance. The activitythat made students notice the importance of
fluency is classified as an awareness-raisingactivity, whereas the 5-week speaking practice
is considered to be an attitude-changing one. We can also see that students raise theirawareness of their learning through reflection and change their attitudes toward learning
through practice. I can thus conclude that my students were beginning to develop reactive
autonomy. In order to enhance the further development of autonomy, I believe that we needto give more opportunities for students to experience the combined benefits of fluency andreflection. However, we should not forget that slower students need more time and practice tochange their attitudes and achieve speaking success. Different students have different rates ofdevelopment. This is something that we should always try to keep in mind in trying to develop
autonomous learning.

As for myself, I have learned the following things from taking part in the collaborative
Anthology project. Writing this paper gave me opportunities to reflect on how and why I
designed this, and I remembered what I wanted to get from this. This process raises awarenessof my teaching. Through two meetings with members of the project, I got a lot of supportivecomments and critical opinions. Supportive comments encouraged me to carry out the project.

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Critical opinions deepened my understanding of autonomy. My project is an on-going one.
There will still be points that need further development. In order to givestudents a clearer
sense of fluency, one of the other teachers suggestedthat students should time their pauses
and write down the time on their worksheets while dictating their speaking. This would allow
them to easily see, each time they check the worksheets, how their pauses prevent them fromspeaking fluently. I thought this is a splendid idea to employ. Without collaborative work, I
could not think of ideas of this kind.

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Critical Reader Response i

Helga Deeg

First of all, this is a very good and interesting study! There is plenty of potential benefit here forboth teachers and students. To my mind, this project is very exciting and encouraging. Why do
I think so?

In this promising proposal, I appreciate very much the clear focus on learner autonomy,
motivation, and the learning process itself. Having read Emika's detailed analysis of appropriate
teaching material, I think the videos will be a good common basis and starting point forinteresting discussions among students and possible changes in their attitudes towards using
the English language much more freely and successfully as a means of communication. A video
is normally a medium learners are very much interested in. Children's videos, especially, will bevery helpful as the language level used in the videos is easy to understand. This will increase thelearners' motivation and give them the feeling of success. I also support the idea of making thelearners use a variety of strategies. This is important when your goal for a long-term learning
process is to have (more) autonomous learners.
I support Emika's idea of helping the students overcome their shyness and giving them authentic
assignmentswhich make them feel a real need to communicate. The students' use of the mothertongue is discussed in a very profound and detailedwayin the study. This is something a foreign
languageteacher always has to consider and find reasonable solutions for, and Emika has done avery good job here. Her thoughts, expressed in differentparts of the study,show that she is a veryreflective and professional teacher who always considers her students and their learning needs ina sensitive and considerate way. She avoids creating frustration and fosters the students' learning
process by alsotaking into account her students'culturalbackground.I cannot agree more with her
ideas about enabling her students to do pair work and to accept making mistakes, and encouraging
them to speak English as a foreign language more fluently.

Emika bases the purpose of this study and the development of the lessons very professionallyon a well-elaborated theoretical section. I fully appreciate her way of guiding her students
from teacher-centred learners to more autonomous learners who are motivated, able totake responsibility for their own learning process and also enjoy practising English. At the
beginning, the teacher is making the fundamental decisions for the students, but—as in alearning spiral—step by step the teacher gives the students the chance to make choices.The
term "structured 'reactive' autonomy" which Emika uses exactly describes the development in
the foreign language classroom. The very clear structure of the whole study can be found again
in the equally clear structure of the students' learning process. The reader gets very precise
information on all the valid aspects of the study.
To my mind, the evaluation part is most important in two ways: to prove progression andsuccess, and to improve the students' future learning process and the teacher's future wayof teaching. Learner autonomy should focus not only on students' ways of becoming more
independent learners but also on more reflective teachers. This study shows that the students
get detailed information on evaluation to help them realize their own position in the learning
process and to increase their motivation for future work.
I do not doubt at all the achievement which Emika describes at the end of the study. The
study, and its precise analysis of the results, cannot be admired more. It is very good evidenceof the success of Emika's profound and reflective way of teaching.

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Autonomy You

Asks

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too

•

Abe

Critical Reader Response 2
Keiko Sakui

First of all,I need to admit that although I think fostering autonomy is one of the most important
issues in learningand teachingin general, the concept of fostering autonomy is an area withwhich I havebeen struggling. In particular, trying to relatethe theoretical perspectives inautonomous learning to specific situations (such as in forms of languagelearning activities) does
not always seem to be straightforward, and it has been difficultfor me to grapple with this area.
I have been consulting students as a language adviser at the Self-Access Centre at the Uni
versity of Auckland for the past five months. I am in a fortunate position to be able to meet
students individually over a relatively long period of time (3 months) in order to encourage
autonomous, self-directed learning. What I witness every day in my work is how different theconcept of autonomous learning is to each individual student, and I keep asking myself what
are the exact links between autonomy development and what students decide to do (or I advise
them to do) in specific actions and activities.
Having acknowledged my shortcomings in my expertise, in this reader response, I will focus
my reflections on how Emika's research resonated with my own work and also how it posed
further questions regarding autonomy development and language learning activities.
Emika designed and implemented a fluency focused-activity, based on two theoretical perspec
tives of autonomy. One of these perspectives is the 3-stage development model of autonomyraising awareness, changing attitudes, and transferring roles (Scharle & Szabo, 2000), and theother is focusing on reactive autonomy rather than proactive autonomy (Littlewood, 1999).

Students' responses in Emika'sproject show the students particularly liked listening to theirown recorded speech and reflecting on their performance. This raised their awareness of theirlearning process and, in turn, influenced their learning attitudes positivelyand enhanced theirmotivation to learn. This process is congruent with the above mentioned autonomy development
model, especially with the first two stages; this also resonates with my experiences working at
the Self-Access Centre. The students I meet here also value awareness-raisingactivities. For
example,we provide workshops in which students practice speaking skills, especiallypresentationand discussion skills, and we videotape their performances. Students often say they like theopportunity to be able to watch themselvesobjectively and reflect on their own speaking skills.
Based on the students' self-reflection and positive attitudinal changes, Emika notes, "I canthus conclude that my students were beginning to develop reactive autonomy." Emika's line
forces me to face the question I have been struggling with for some time. Are these conditions(self-reflection and attitudinal changes) synonymous with autonomous learning? Do selfreflection and positive attitudinal change guarantee reactive autonomy? Where can I see clear
evidence of a relationship between the practices and activities, and autonomous development? I
would not disagree with the importance of self-reflection and positive attitudes in autonomous
development, but, if possible, I would like to see how autonomy can be operationalised andclearly evidenced in this type of empirical research, perhaps in her subsequent projects.
Emika concludes her chapter with an argument for the importance of teacher collaboration
through projects such as those appearing in Autonomy You Ask! (see Murphey, Chapter 1).
Reading and responding to Emika's research has given me an opportunity to consider, question
my understanding, and gain further interest in the topic. I greatly appreciate the chance to be apart of this project and would like to thank Emika and all the people involved in Autonomy You
Ask! for providing me with such an invaluable experience.
— LD SIG 2003 A n t h o l o g y —