JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報	
 
	
  

Some	
   Autonomy-­‐Related	
   Problems	
  and	
  Possible	  Solutions	  	 自律学習に関する問題と解決
の可能性	
 
	
  
Mehmet	  Boyno	  Sahinbey	
  Kiz	
  Teknik	
  ve	
  Meslek	
  Lisesi	  	
 Mehmet	  Boyno,	  Sahinbey	  Kiz	
  Teknik	
 ve	
 Meslek	 Lisesi	
 
	
  
	
  

T

he way I
wasbrought up
as a child athome and theway I was treatedas a student at
schoolinanobedient culture(one where a person isn’t able to decide or
behave on their own in most cases) made me
eager to become an autonomous individual. In
the first year of my PhD studies, I becameaware of the concept of learner autonomy andcould name this desire concretely. Then, I
conducted research on some dependentengineering students with low motivation. They
were dependent in that their English instructor
was complaining about their not activating theirinner mechanisms in terms of shaping anddirecting their own learning. On mysupervisor’s advice, I started to deal withlearner autonomy. My PhD dissertation isentitled “An analysis of the factors influencing
learner autonomy in the Turkish EFL context”(Boyno, 2011). While learning more aboutautonomy, I decided to encourage my students
to become autonomous because my students
were, as I observed with the engineering
students, not so independent nor self-directed.
Accordingly, at the very beginning of theacademic term, I administered a questionnaire
to students so that I could find out theirpersonal diversities: their learning styles,
multiple
intelligenceareas,
emotional
intelligences, motivation, attitudes and anxiety
towards learning English, parental attitudes
and English language learning strategies thatthey employ. I shared the results with them sothat they could experience more personalawareness before getting language awarenessand learner awareness. I did not follow the12	
   LEARNING	
  LEARNING	
  19(1)	
  	
  ready-made curriculum and the commercial
coursebooks entirely. Instead, my students
decided on the syllabus design, the order ofthe units and topics to study in accordancewith their needs and wants. They also
developed their own materials in addition tousing the coursebooks. At the end of thesemesters, they assessed both their own
performance (self-assessment) and that of
their peers (peer assessment).
I am interested in parental attitudes andautonomy in early childhood, and theapplications of self-access centres. I am alsointerested in classroom-based advising. I know
the difficulties of classroom-based advising(please see my explanation of our presentation
for the details); yet, in last year’s IATEFL
Learner Autonomy Special Interest Group (LASIG) event entitled ‘Advising for Language
Learner Autonomy’ held at Kanda University ofInternational Studies (KUIS), I expected tolearn more about the role of the advisor andthat of the advisee and about the advisingprocess including the development of materials.
I have been teaching English in Turkey since1995. I worked at both private and public
primary and secondary schools. Everything
was quite traditionally teacher-centred: theforeign language teaching system, teachers’
way of teaching, administration, and so on. In
2007 and 2009, I presented and listened topresentations on different aspects of learnerautonomy at the Independent Learning
Association Conferences (ILACs). The LA SIG
event at Kanda was very special for me owing
to its on-target topic: advising. As a practitioner
researcher, I have been aiming to practiceautonomy in my classrooms since 2007
despite facing many problems (the details of
which you will find below where I write about
our presentation). By joining this LA SIG event,I wanted to learn from other academics’
experiences as to classroom-based advising intheir presentations and to find possible
solutions to my problems.
In 2009, I listened to Marina MozzonMcPherson’s presentation at ILAC in HongKong. She talked about advising and how todeal with advising-related problems. I enjoyedit very much. Hence, I decided to join the oneday event at Kanda after flying from Turkey toJapan for nearly 11 hours non-stop, thinking
that I would be able to listen to Marina again.
Unfortunately, she could not make it to thisevent on advising because of some healthproblems. (I hope you made a speedy
recovery, Marina!) Yes, I missed her but

Newsletter	
  of	
  the	  JALT	
  Learner	
  Development	  SIG	  	
  enjoyed andpresentations.

learned

a

lot

from

other

One of my main points of interest is the selfaccess centres (SACs) incorporating materials
available for the students, advisors andassessment. I satisfied this academic hungerof mine during the pre-conference visits to theself-access centres. This was not my first timeat self-access centres. In 2009, I also visited
some centres in Hong Kong as a preconference event before ILAC and in Mexico
when I visited Marina Chavez Sanchez andher colleagues at Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México (UNAM), and Virna
Velázquez and her colleagues at Universidad
Autónoma del Estado de México (UAEM). I
tried to understand how people design thesecentres, how many advisors are employed forhow many students, what the limitations of thecentres are, and what kind of students tend to
make use of the facilities in the centres. I
enjoyed my interviews with both the advisors
and the students there in this sense. I did thesame during the SAC visit before the LA SIG
event at Kanda. I found out that, if notintegrated into the curriculum in any year,
mostlyfinal-year
students(fourth-year
students) visit self-access centres aiming toobtain some materials in their majors to assist
them with their career after graduation. In otherwords, they hoped to find opportunities inEnglish for academic and specific purposes. I
observed that there were not often enoughadvisors in SACs. Another problem was not
the diversity of materials but the limited
number of the same materials.
My teaching experience through autonomy
taught me that learner autonomy is a kind ofcharacter education. As one gets older, I
believe it gets difficult to change a person’s
character. Hence, it would be better to startnurturing autonomous learners when they areyoung. And I insist that, even before beginningschool, children should be brought up as
autonomous individuals. In other words,
parental attitudes are of crucial importance.
There is a famous Turkish saying: “A tree getsshaped when young.”
In the conference, I visited the poster
presentation entitled “Advising using parenting
skills” by Yuki Hasegawa and attended thepresentations entitled “Advisor versus advisee”
by Umida Ashurova, “Developing a deeper
understanding of learning processing during
complex learning tasks” by Luke Carson, “Howa learner changed: Linguistic evidence ofmetacognitive awareness in advising sessions”

	
  by Hisako Sugawara, and “Encouraging
learner autonomy through peer feedback in thewriting classroom” by Jennie Roloff-Rothman.
My colleagues Eyyup Akıl, Ferhat Dolaş and I
gave a presentation entitled “Difficulties ofclassroom-based advising”.
The themes of these presentations suited myinterests and the questions in my mind. Yuki’s
poster introduced the concept of STAR
Parenting(respond tocooperation,
acknowledge feelings, set limits, teach new
skills, and avoid problems). These components,
which are originally proposed for not perfectparents but growing parents, are used in faceto-face advising sessions and also in
written feedback on the students’ work byteachers and aim to assist children in
becoming autonomous by giving them
responsibility to make choices on their own.
Although very practical, the steps of this study
look very difficult to practice in a crowded
classroom in terms of dealing with each
student in details. Nonetheless, I believe thatthese steps can be useful with students who
are really eager to learn English at areasonable level in spite of their harshconditions. What is more, this study positively
confirmed my belief that not only teachers at
schools but also parents at home can dosomething to nurture autonomous individuals.
Umida and her two third-year student advisors
talked about the linguistic gains from peer
advising to first-year students through positive
feedback. They shed light on the importance of
the interference of peer advisors’ own learning
styles, and learner beliefs and attitudes inadvising sessions. Some other variables thatthey emphasized were cooperation between
peers, credibility of peer advisors, personality,
age, gender, culture, motivation and language.
I asked Umida about her thoughts concerning
the integration of self-access centres into thecurriculum as in their case. She replied that asa limitation of their curriculum they had toseparate listening skills from reading, writing
and speaking skills and learner training.
Students worked on their listening skills in theirself-access centre as a compulsory part of thecurriculum
while
practicing
the
other
components in the regular classrooms. One ofthe participants suggested that integration of
the self-access centres into the curriculum
raises awareness in students and makes them
explore
more
about
their
strengths,
weaknesses, wants and needs. I have seenthat there are different set-ups with regards to
SACs: some are completely integrated into thecurriculum, some are integrated partially into

LEARNING	
  LEARNING	
  19(1)	
   13	  

JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報	 	  the curriculum, and others are separate fromthe curriculum. I think it might be a burden forteacher-dependent students to visit such acentre and try to make their own way throughtheir learning. However, as they get
accustomed to the centre and start to be more
successful in their learning, that is, once they
get a taste of success, this burden might turninto a habit of them making use of centres.
Luke’s presentation was on how cognitive andmetacognitive processing interact in complex
learning situations. In his study, teacher
guidance was replaced with learning advisors’
working with advisees – a very dynamic andcontinuous movement between upper andlower levels of cognitive processing. This
process was improved by all learners’
metacognitive behaviours to various extents.
To him, the upper level of cognitive processing
is a must for the completion of a complex
independent learning task and must be
accompanied by metacognitive learning
concepts such as planning, monitoring andcontrol of learning. Most of my students are
passive and have low motivation to learn
English. They prefer playing the secretary of
the teacher while they take notes in theclassroom and memorising their notes before
exams as much as they can. Putting aside
whether they can direct their own learning interms of planning, monitoring and controlling it(metacognition), they do not even try to
discover their own wants and needs. Neither
do they try to understand the tasks that they
are assigned (cognition). Thus, parallel to thefindings of this study, cognition andmetacognition should go hand in hand.
Hisako’s presentation described one way toassist learners to reach their learning goals: byautonomous dialogues through multiple
advising sessions instead of assigning themwith a long to-do list. Hisako’s case study with
one female student put forward some linguistic
evidence as to how her learner’s metacognitiveawareness developed to take responsibility ofher own learning process. At the end of thisinformative
presentation,
one
of
the
participants commented that teachers should
focus on not only “what is the student doing”
but also “what does she think she is doing” In
addition, he added that even parents should
personalise the learning process for their kids
and support them metacognitively at their own
reasonable pace instead of asking them to do
everything that teachers require, including
staying up late all night studying. Yes, this was
one of my viewpoints concerning autonomy. I
felt elated to see that there are academics14	
   LEARNING	
  LEARNING	
  19(1)	
  	
  thinking in the same way as me.
In Jennie’s workshop, participants discussed
the significance of peer advising and peer
feedback
fordynamic
andeffective
autonomous writing lessons. During theworkshop, through sample essays and peer
reflection worksheets, we played the adviser
and learner. At the end of the workshop, we
found opportunities to speculate on theapplicability of the presented writing materials
to our own contexts and encourage thepromotion of peer feedback in the writingclassroom. I believe that peer advising andpeer feedback should be aimed for whenautonomy is in practice. However, when writing(a productive skill) is in question, teachers
should be attentive and keep monitoring thelearners’ work.
My colleagues and I aimed to draw attention tosome other elements apart from the learning
advisor which is still a crucial component ofautonomous learning: the education system,
fellow teachers, learners, administrators andparents in the Turkish EFL context at thesecondary school level. The foreign language
teaching system has imposed ready-madecurriculums and materials. Fellow teachers
have been uninterested in professional
development and have showed resistance tochange and shifts in their roles. Students havebeen unwilling to take on more responsibility intheir own learning and are disturbed andreluctant to leave their comfort-zones.
Administrators have been strictly loyal to theready-made issues and concerned about thestudents’ disturbance just like parents. At theend of our presentation, one of the participants
told us that we were not alone in experiencing
these issues. He meant they experienced thesame problems in Japan. Another academic
complained about the restrictions made bypolicy makers. In addition, Andy Barfield asked
whether there was an autonomy association in
Turkey. It was an honour for me to say that wehave already started a new association withmy colleagues. We aim to conduct autonomyrelated research at school – starting fromuniversities down to primary school. In order tobe able to practice learner autonomy in any
circumstance as effectively as possible – atsecondary schools in my case – I believe thateveryone
involved(teachers,
students,
administrators, parents) needs training.
Additionally, a radical change is needed in theforeign language teaching system. Fortunately,
the system in Turkey has changed since thebeginning of this academic term. We would liketo start with the three universities in our cityNewsletter	
  of	
  the	  JALT	
  Learner	
  Development	  SIG	  	
  (Gaziantep). At the same time, we are in close
touch with the Provincial Administration of
National Education to train the English
teachers to help them gain positive beliefs
towards learner autonomy as an initial issue.
Thus, they will be able to encourage theirstudents, administrators and student-parents
to practice learner autonomy as well. The
students may be encouraged to gain more
responsibility related to their own learning
processes. The administrators and the student
parents may be more patient with the process
and provide the teacher and the students withsome
supportbothfinanciallyandpedagogically.
All of these points reminded me of two realitiesof the Islamic Turkish educational system:
medreses (a kind of religious and scientifichigher education institution) and Holy Qur’ancourses. At medreses (although rare in
number nowadays, they have been functioning
for centuries), the scholars have their own
classrooms, just like individualised rooms fordifferent skills at self-access centres. They
educate groups of two students at the sametime by means of assessing their individual
learning out of class. This is to not only
personalise the learning but also provide
opportunities to negotiate in groups. Students
follow their own paths of learning and try toaccomplish the requirements at their own pace.
That is to say, even though some students
start the programme on the very same day,they may soon find themselves following
different paths according to their levels,
background and pace. As for the Holy Qur’ancourses, there is a hodja (a teacher) helping agroup of successful learners to go ahead andwork at their own pace. After finishing their
daily requirements, these leading successful
learners are assigned with teaching andhelping some other groups of learners learn attheir own pace. In other words, they play therole of peer advisors. In both cases (medresesand Holy Qur’an courses), learning is not
limited to school or course hours. Rather,students do research and study out of school
and are scaffolded in their learning whennecessary.

choose from ready-made materials or develop
their own materials? When should students
start to develop their own materials? Whatkinds of training programmes should beorganisedforstudents,
teachers,
administrators and parents? Where should theadvisor start and stop? Is peer advising
practical in all levels? What are the typicalcharacteristics of an advisor? What are theroles of teacher-, peer- and self-assessment? I
am planning to pursue my post-doc studies tofind answers to these questions.
Mehmet Boyno received his MA in English
Language Teaching from Gaziantep University,
Gaziantep, Turkey, in 2003 and his PhD fromÇukurova University, Adana, Turkey, in 2011.
His main interests include learner autonomy,
English for specific purposes, teaching young
learners,
personal
andprofessional
development, and teacher education.
References
Boyno, M. (2011). An analysis of the factors
influencing learner autonomy in the Turkish
EFL
context.
(Unpublisheddoctoraldissertation). Cukurova University, Adana.

All in all, many questions come to my mind
regarding nurturing autonomous learners andindividuals: How can the teacher be
encouraged to let go of some of their control
and to let their students gain more
responsibility? When should we start giving
responsibility to the students? What criteria
should be taken into consideration while
deciding on the tasks? Should students	
  LEARNING	
  LEARNING	
  19(1)	
   15