JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報	 	  Reflections	  on	  Autonomy	  自律学習のリフレクション	 	  Michael	  Wilkins	  Ritsumeikan	  University	  	  Michael	 Wilkins,	 立命館大学	  M

y name isMichaelWilkins.
Iworkatseveraluniversities
aroundthe Kansai area. I
received a grant toattend
theJALTnational conferencein Tokyo last November. I’d like to thank theLD SIG members for this support. I think thesegrants, however small, make a big difference
to part-time teachers. The professional
development costs of courses, books, andconference fees and transportations costs canadd up over a year when coupled with noresearch grants from the universities. Last year,
I had a new addition to my little family, andbefore I received notice that I would receive
the LD grant I was seriously considering
cancelling my attendance in Tokyo. Howeverin the end I participated in five presentations.

My learner autonomy “history”
I’ve always been a bookworm, so when I firstheard of Extensive Reading (ER) through apamphlet written by Rob Waring and publishedby Oxford University Press, I was an instantenthusiast. However, my teaching context at
the time was not conductive to experimentation
so I soon started doing my M.Ed at Temple
University. I think my interest in both ER andlearner autonomy started from my own
learning style and interest in reading. I actuallyjoined the LD SIG at that time but was unclear
on how to participate besides going to thenational conference, so I let my membershiplapse.
Another source of my interest in learnerautonomy is from my classroom experience.
Like most teachers I experiment in theclassroom to see what works best. Essentially,
I do my own action research daily and I foundthe obvious pattern that students would
engage in learning much more readily when
dealing with topics they were interested in andin ways they were comfortable with. Luckily, inthe past 3 years I have had teaching situations

16	   LEARNING	  LEARNING	  19(1)	  	  that allowed me to be flexible and experimentwith different materials and methods to follow
up this interest. Some materials and methods I
have tried are extensive reading, portfolio
assessment, negotiated syllabi, projects,vlogging (video blogging), webquests, andvarious social media applications.

Autonomy research group
Last year I joined a group of 6 researchersfrom various universities but based at Kansai
University of international Studies. The focusof the group is learner autonomy. We
administered a survey to almost 1000
participants at various universities aroundJapan.
The research was inspired by a study
conducted by Holden and Usuki (1999), whichattempted to correct the misconception thatJapanese university students are somehow
less autonomous than learners from othercultural backgrounds. Their study utilized 10
open-ended interview questions to elicit
students’ attitudes and beliefs about learning,
their expectations of themselves, and theirexpectations of their teachers in the learning
process. Our study, however, utilized aquestionnaire used by Ustunluoglu (2009) inTurkey. This questionnaire contained 22
questions to elicit: what learning decisions andtasks students perceive as their responsibility,
what learning decisions and tasks are theirteacher’s responsibility and what learning
decisions and tasks they perceive they arecapable of doing. The final goal is to measure
students’ perceptions of responsibility andability in the classroom - two main learnerautonomy dimensions laid out by Littlewood(1999).
The process of doing this research has been
as interesting as the outcomes. As the lastperson to join the group, I had no say in theinitial structure of the research. However,being able to collaborate with a large groupand participating in the process of collecting,coding, and analyzing data from a study ofover 1000 respondents was a valuableexperience.

My classes
I have been lucky enough to have beenteaching in places where I have teacher
autonomy. To me, teacher autonomy is thefreedom to experiment and be creative in theclassroom. This has allowed me to experimentwith using new technologies, peer assessment,
syllabus negotiation and other studentcentered teaching methods.

Newsletter	  of	  the	  JALT	  Learner	  Development	  SIG	  	  I saw Steve Quasha’s Best of JALT 2008
winning presentation at a Kobe chapter
meeting on portfolio and peer assessment, andhave been working on variations of that idea
for over 3 years. Some things I like about thismethod are: the students reflect on what they
have done over the whole course, theaudience is more than just the teacher, thestudents have choices about what they will putin their portfolio and how they will present it. Aswell as English skills the students need to use
artistic skills, and, most of importantly,
students choose to share some surprising
personal information about their successful
experiences that brings the group closer
together. Students always give this sort ofevaluation good feedback.
I have also been experimenting with new ways
for students to present their information. Someways I have tried have been Pecha Kucha(see pecha-kucha.org), Prezi (see prezi.com)
presentations, poster presentations, and video.
Recently, the production and consumption ofvideo has been a major area of student activity
in and out of class. One reason for this is
Facebook and smart phones make it extremely
easy for students to make and share shortvideos and interact with each other.

Recent interests
For the last few years I have been reallyinterested in polyglots, people who speak
multiple languages, and their take on language
learning. Their perspective is a little different
than that of a language teacher, but they are
the ultimate successful autonomous language
learners so they must have something to say.
Of course, throughout history there have been
many good examples of polyglots, but in thedigital age there are a few that have caught myattention:
SteveKaufman(thelinguist.blogs.com
andlingq.com),
Khatzumoto (alljapaneseallthetime.com), andBenny Lewis (fluentin3months.com). All three
are very successful and autonomous language
learners. They are not particularly supportiveof language classes and teachers, but rather
advocate Krashen-style input learning methods
such as extensive reading and listening.

JALT National
Autonomy seems to have become a buzzword
in the teaching community. At every session I
attended the presenters mentioned autonomy
and how their topic would positively affectstudent autonomy. This may have been due tomy own focus but the presentations were often
random ones I chose for their time and location	  next to my presentations rather than their
particular topics. Since then I have noticed
learner autonomy mentioned in almost every
local presentation as well.
I’m embarrassed to say I had not heard of Phil
Benson until his keynote speech, which piqued
my interest. Through attending the LD SIG
forum and dinner, I had the good fortune oftalking to him at length. I have since bought hisbook and am currently working through it.
I participated in five presentations at the 2011
JALT national, four of which were connected tolearner autonomy. The first was titled“Examining Learner Autonomy Dimensions”
from the project described in the third sectionof this article. The second was titled “The 24Hour English Challenge”. In this project we
asked students to volunteer to use English all
day on a non-school day. Originally, the idea
was for students to individually try a variety ofautonomous activities but in collaboration. Itevolved into groups of students interacting in
English in the community while completing funtasks. This worked well and was verysatisfying when students recreated the idea
themselves without direct teacher input (but asinvited participants). The third presentation
was entitled “Using Google Docs in the WritingClassroom”. This was mainly an introductory
presentation describing for teachers on how touse the Google Docs tool. However, the focusof the activities was on groups of students
working autonomously on writing projects
collaboratively on line. The last presentation
was titled “Developing an Audience for ESLWriters”, which looked at using the Internet tocreate spaces for students to create real
meaningful content that others want to readand in turn motivate students to learn more.

FutureMy main project next year is how to create an
audience on the Internet for student work.
Students react positively to an appreciative
audience for their efforts. With thedevelopment of the Internet and social media,
this has become easier than ever before. I’dlike to start a blog, YouTube channel andFacebook page where students write about
what interests them about Japan in English
and attract people around the world who areinterested in Japan.
A second project is an English Speakers’ club.
Students from various universities would meetto do fun activities in English only. Students
often express a need to find social situations touse their English and meet others who want toLEARNING	  LEARNING	  19(1)	   17	  JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報	 	  do the same.
References
Holden, B. & Usuki, M. (1999). Learnerautonomyinlanguage
learning:A
preliminary investigation. Bulletin of Hokuriku
University, 23, 191-203. Retrieved fromhttp://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS /ED450581.pdf
Littlewood, W. (1999). Defining and developing
learner autonomy in East Asian contexts.
Applied Linguistics, 20(1), 71-94.
Ustunluoglu, E. (2009). Autonomy in language
learning: Do students take responsibility for
their learning? Journal of Theory andPractice in Education, 5(2), 148-169.
Retrievedfrom
http://eku.comu.edu.tr/index/5/2/e_ustunluogl
u.pdf

Reflection	   on	   the	   JALT	   2011	  Conference	  J ALT	 2011	 の感想	  National	  Memorial	  Olympics	  Center,	  Yoyogi,	  Tokyo,	  November	  18th	  –	  21st,	  2011	  国立オリンピック記念	 青少年総合センター、2011年11月18日〜21日	  	  Matthew	  Coomber	  Kyoto	  Sangyo	  University	  マシュー・クーンバー	  	  京都産業大学	 

W

ere anyone toconduct
agenre analysis
ofELT
conference
reports, they would
doubtless arrive at theconclusion
that
conferences
areunremittingly
sunnyaffairs,andpresentations always professional, thoughtprovoking and engaging. But of course thereality is not quite the same. Conference-going,
like any other activity, has its fair share offrustrations and disappointments. It’s just thatthese aspects of the experience rarely seem tomake it as far as the reports, and with goodreason considering the huge amount ofvolunteer work that goes into organising a
conference on the scale of JALT National. It
seems almost inconceivable to report on aconference in anything less than glowing terms,
as if to mention a negative experience is insome way a criticism of the conference as a18	   LEARNING	  LEARNING	  19(1)	  	  whole. Even though this is most emphaticallynot the case, it is thus with some trepidationthat I must report that my two days in Yoyogi
included both ups and downs.
Despite the risk of living up to the common
stereotype of the British as being obsessedwith the weather, it would be difficult to write abalanced report on this year’s conference
without mentioning the torrential rain which
persisted throughout the whole of the first day.
I wish I had been able to ignore the effect ofthe downpour which set in when I was in the
middle of Meiji-jingu, having foolishly decided
that a walk across the park from Harajuku
would be a more pleasant way to get to thesite than attempting to change trains at the
intimidatingly complex (to a non-Tokyoite atleast) Shinjuku station. Sadly though, thatwould require a more phlegmatic characterthan that which I possess. Needless to say,arriving soaking wet was not a good start tothe day, and with events split between threebuildings drying out was never more than
temporary. This combination of bad luck andmy own bad judgment led me to reflect upon
how these two factors can impact upon theconference-going experience.
A more predictable, but equally unavoidable
problem, relates to scheduling. While one of
the great advantages of a conference the sizeof JALT National is that there will almost
certainly be a presentation appealing to yourinterests at any particular time, the downsideof this is that there will often be more than one.
Thus, when deciding on my first presentationof the day during my shinkansen journey fromKyoto, I was faced with the dilemma (trilemma,perhaps?) of choosing between threepresentations which, for very different reasons,appealed to me roughly equally. Greg Sholdt’s
Featured Speaker Workshop - Getting started
with quantitative research, sounded just thekind of thing I needed to help me with mycurrent research, in which I am looking at ways
teachers can encourage learners to make selfdirected revisions to their writing, rather thanrelying on teacher feedback. Yet on the otherhand, I really wanted to hear Marcos
Benevides introducing his new series ofgraded readers, based on the Choose yourown adventure series I enjoyed as a child. As
next year I will be starting a new job at auniversity with a well-established extensive
reading programme, I was especiallyinterested in discovering whether the ELT
version of the series had managed to retain
the atmosphere of suspense and reader
involvement I recall from my own reading.