Casquero Valencia, Daniela Fernndez Vargas, Aydalith Mendoza Vsquez, Erika

Learners Autonomy
Definition
It is the capacity of the students to take responsibility for their own learning and selfdevelopment. It is acquired during the learning process. As a result, learners manifest critical reflections on the lesson and they become self-motivated, independent and active to achieve their aims, monitoring their progresses and evaluating their final result.

Benefits
Once the learners set their aims, they become responsible for the result, which means they will participate actively, taking control of their own learning. Learner autonomy increases motivation in class which makes lessons more effective and enjoyable. Besides it helps to develop the students ability to think by their own. Autonomy helps learners to accept and respect others differences by developing cooperation skills, creativity, productivity and the ability to adapt under new conditions

Disadvantages
In the case of weak learners, it might be demanding for them to take hold and assume responsibility. It can be difficult for them to deal with the time required to solve projects given. Learners may think that the teachers are slothful and give all the information is part of their job. On the other hand, teachers can lose control of the class, when learners become too involved on the process.

Applications
The teacher gives a project in which students interview someone asking him or her personal questions and make a presentation with the information found. The teacher ask the students to listen to BBC or CNN news at home and take notes about one they find interesting in order to comment during the next class.

Appendix
Practical applications in autonomy
1. Activity A (outside and inside the classroom). Aim: Develop speaking through an interview presenting a project. Levels: basic, pre-intermediate A) Teacher assigns pair work to do the project and sets a due day for the project. B) Teacher gives clear instruction to the students: i) First, students have to interview a person from another classroom. The question must be about: a) Personal details, b) Describe her or his typical Sunday, c) The last travel, including where and when it happened, who went with his or her, describe his or her activities. ii) The presentation must be in PPT including pictures. C) Days before the presentation,teacher guides the students and checks their presentation, pronunciation and grammar. D) The day of the project,students expose their project in class. Example: Student A expose the following presentation in class after doing his/her research about one of his/her friend: Milagros is my best friend. She is 22 years old and she is a student. She studies literature at San Marcos University. She lives with her mother Margot and her brother Aaron. They live in San Martin de Porres. On Sundays, She usually gets up at seven oclock in the morning. She has breakfast with

her family and then she goes to church. Then, she goes to the market with her mother and they buy some groceries for lunch. They prepare lunch and her family eats together. In the afternoon, she watches a movie or she does her homework for Monday. The last time she travelled, she went to Barranca with her friend Cecilia for New Years Eve they stayed there for three days and they went to the beach. They swam and sunbathe. It was a good moment. 2. Activity B (outside and inside the classroom) Aim: improve listening and speaking through listening news Levels: upper intermediate and advanced a) Teacher assigns the students a listening task related to news (BBC CNN) to develop at home. b) At home, students take note of the listening task (news) which they have selected. c) In class, teacher makes the students work in groups of three to comment about the new s (four minutes). d) Teacher monitors the groups. e) Teacher asks for volunteers to share the information they got about the news. f) Teacher asks students who does not participate to reinforce understanding. Example: Student B shares with the class the news she/he found interesting after he/ she listened it in BBC news: Well, the news that I have found very interesting in BBC it is about how nowadays the way people pay for anything is changing. For example, in the past, people used to pay with cheques, but now people tend to use change or notes and in some cases credit cards or debit cards even when they want to buy some things that arent too expensive like pens or notebooks. And that means that cheques are going to disappear in the future. But, what I like the most about this news was that they mentioned that, in the future, the way that we pay things now is going to change. We no longer going to use money or cards,

we are going to use our mobile phones! I think that is pretty amazing. Our mobile phone is going to be connected with our bank account. We are only going to need to tap our mobile phone to a special device and then we are going to introduce our pin on it or even, when want to spend a big amount of money, this device is going to recognize our voice or fingerprint.

References
Books
Harmer, Jeremy 2001 Watkins, Peter 2005 The practice of English Language Teaching. Pearson. 3rd. ed. England Learning to Teach English. A practical introduction for new teachers Delta Publishing. 1st. ed. England

Links
http://www.hindu.com/edu/2008/06/16/stories/2008061651030300.htm http://www.kyoai.ac.jp/college/ronshuu/no-10/onozawa1.pdf http://skemman.is/stream/get/1946/7688/19634/1/ http://echku.hk/autonomy/what.html http://www.thornburyscott.com/assets/Speaking%20ETP.pdf http://www.sagepub.com/ridley/Examples%20of%20literature%20reviews/Francesco%20Ba rillaro%20literature%20review.pdf http://faculty.washington.edu/sunolen/562/old%20562%20files/Stefanou.pdf http://www4.pucsp.br/inpla/benson_artigo.pdf.