Wanted: Autonomous Learners

Abstract

The success of students to become autonomous learners also depends on the teacher who is also autonomous. An autonomous teacher is a teacher is a teacher who lead the students to become autonomous learners themselves by giving them some training. To improve learning, learning training seems to be the order of the day in second language acquisition. Many of our students probably would be able to perform better if they underwent training in how to learn English as a foreign language, as learning a foreign language based on assumption some of which are different from the ones underpinning non-language disciplines. To conclude, we have to warn ourselves that there is no single set of uniform learning strategy which would guarantee success for everybody, as each individual has his/her own preferred learning strategies. In addition, learning strategies to some extent are also culturally determined. Learner training takes a long time as does language learning, thus the need for patience and perseverance on the part of the learner. Even though learning strategies are teachable, we are not sure whether the learners would be able to apply them successfully as other factors also intervene, such as time constraints which might prevent the internalization of the new strategies.