Atti del IV Congresso della società di Didattica delle Lingue e Linguistica Educativa DILLE (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, 2-4 febbraio 2017). Il fenomeno dell’internazionalizzazione è sempre più ...presente in ogni sfera della vita economica, sociale e culturale del paese. In ambito educativo, l’internazionalizzazione è associata a nuove condizioni culturali e linguistiche, nuove esigenze e problemi, e i suoi effetti sono ad ampio raggio, dal momento che il fenomeno produce un impatto importante sull’educazione linguistica, sui programmi formativi per gli studenti, sulla formazione dei docenti, sull’erogazione di corsi. Dietro lo sfondo della crescente natura internazionale del sistema educativo, i contributi presentati al Congresso hanno esplorato le implicazioni per l’insegnamento/apprendimento delle lingue e per l’educazione linguistica in generale.
The growing number of internationally mobile students who present Italian L2 language certificates on entry has led the University of Padua Language Centre (CLA) to reflect on whether it should ...maintain an online placement testing as a means of placing students in the relevant classes (Fratter, Ivana & Altinier. Micol 2015. Gli apprendenti di italiano L2 all’Università e le loro abitudini tecnologiche. In Francesca Helm, Linda Bradley, Marta Guarda & Sylvie Thouësny (eds.),
, 177–180. Dublin & Ireland: Research-publishing.net.). As of Academic Years 2014–2015 and 2015–2016, a research project has been underway at the CLA, involving the experimentation of a new integrated system of assessment comprising self-assessment and placement testing. An initial review of the placement test results carried out at the CLA combined with an examination of language certificates presented by the students has raised some critical issues related to incongruous data among the various tests/certifications. Other situations have shown different results regarding language skills within the same test, which has underpinned the decision to introduce a system of self-assessment so as to grant greater autonomy and responsibility to the students when choosing their class. This study sets out to analyze whether exchange students at the CLA are in a position to assess their own level of competence in L2 Italian, and then choose the Italian language class most suited to their language needs, thereby making class formation procedures easier. To this end, two different self-assessment tools were assigned to the students who, in turn, revealed the difficulties they encountered when self- assessing their language level without guidance. This has led to a new approach for self-assessment. This study highlights the process and initial results of research carried out in two phases of experimentation involving a new self-assessment proposal with integrated tools.
Learner autonomy has been a controversial issue among teachers in general and teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) in particular. However, it seems that private institutes and state high ...school EFL teachers’ beliefs about feasibility and desirability of learner autonomy (LA) have not been compared. This study aimed at investigating the feasibility and desirability of learner autonomy from English language teachers’ perspectives. In doing so, the learner autonomy instrument consisting of feasibility and desirability sections was administered to 120 EFL teachers (sixty high school teachers and sixty language institute teachers). The participants were selected through convenience sampling. The data of the study were analyzed through descriptive and inferential statistics (one- sample t-test and Wilcoxon test). The results showed that both private institutes and state high schools EFL teachers have positive perceptions about learner autonomy. However, they do not have the same beliefs about feasibility and desirability of learner autonomy.
This article describes the possibility of using the authoring tool called “Hot Potatoes” as a valuable resource in the design of customized exercises and didactic units for reading comprehension ...courses. In so doing, the authors will also consider the construct of autonomy in the Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). Specifically, the authors will refer to learner autonomy as a desirable characteristic in students in the formative process of developing their reading skills. In addition, teacher autonomy, a frequently forgotten facet of autonomy, will be discussed. Learning styles and their connection with reading comprehension will also be considered. Finally, the authors will describe some generalities about the teaching of reading, the basic features of “Hot Potatoes,” and some practical ideas about how to use this software in reading comprehension courses.
In the paper it has been grounded that under the conditions of forming postindustrial epoch, which is characterised by the processes of globalisation and informatisation, there exists a social demand ...for the specialists who have a formed preparedness for continuous self-education, including linguistic self-instruction. This presupposes developing innovative and strategic thinking as well as realising the objective necessity of continuous enhancing of their proficiency level, which is a key factor of interaction with dynamic and changeable professional environment with rapid obsolescence of knowledge, constant technological advancement, etc. It has been proved that nowadays the role of self-education, as the instrument of forming highly-qualified professionals with sufficient knowledge of foreign languages, is always growing in different countries. Therefore, educators are continually facing the task of improving the theoretical and methodological base of teaching students to be autonomous in their studies. It has been substantiated that, in view of the principle of continuity in science, introducing any innovations into the learning process in linguistic self-education should be preceded by the profound studying of the pedagogically valuable theoretical and practical experience, gained by the previous generations of researchers. Thus, the retrospective analysis of basic historical milestones of evolving the phenomenon “linguistic self-education” has been conducted and its results have been presented in this work.
In the context of ongoing debate about the relationship between strategy training and autonomous learning, this study set out in the belief that they are inextricably linked and sought to explore ...three important aspects of learner strategy development more deeply. An experiment was designed to investigate the effectiveness of learner training with three groups of Saudi students taking a course in English for Medical Purposes: control (no treatment), offline (treatment delivered on paper), and online (online treatment). The treatments used supplementary learning material focused on language learning strategies (LLS). The design and the delivery of the treatments was informed by Rubin, Chamot, Harris, and Anderson (2007), Cohen (1998), Murphy and Hurd (2011), and Murphy (2008a). This paper sought to answer three research questions related to the impact of learner training on students’ attitudes, awareness, and use of LLS in relation to their autonomous abilities after exposure to the treatment. Qualitative data from students’ reflective writings, interviews and focus group discussion was used to answer these questions. For the two treatment groups, the treatment impact was found to be positive in relation to the research questions and negative in the control. The online group outperformed the offline one in all the three investigated aspects.
The article looks at language learner autonomy as a social construct in relation to the context and its user based on the example of Italki, a social networking site for tandem language learning. ...Considering the two foci – the context and the learner – the study is divided into two parts, both carried out from the perspective of online ethnography, each utilising different techniques and tools. Part 1, based on participatory observation and user experience of the author, was aimed at investigating the context of Italki as a language learning environment. Its affordances, noted in the course of the study, are analysed against the three aspects of social learner autonomy (Murray 2014): emotional, political, and spatial, in order to investigate the potential of Italki for interdependent learning. In Part 2 of the study, with its focus on the learner, the data were gathered by means of semi-structured open-ended interviews with Italki users (N=10). One of these interviews evolved into a case study, in which elements of social network analysis (SNA) were utilized to look at learner autonomy of an individual user. The results of the study indicate that learner autonomy in the digital age can be both self- and other-regulated; characterized by learner independence as well as interdependence. All this is very much promoted by new tendencies in language learning and affordances offered by the new media. At the same time, though, the nature of the autonomy exercised will, to a large extent, be determined by individual learner agendas, motives and attitudes.
This paper reports on the results of a strategy training experience on a group of 30 A1-eight graders from two public schools in Colombia. Our goal was to identify how the development of ...metacognitive and vocabulary learning strategies, executed through a WebQuest, influenced the students’ performance in a vocabulary-learning task and their levels of learning autonomy. Data were analysed following the grounded theory approach. The results showed increases in the percentage of students using learning strategies, the adoption of metacognitive behaviours and levels of learner autonomy. Therefore, we propose that classroom practices should incorporate a greater degree of strategy training, mediated by Web-based tools, to help students achieve higher levels of learning control and to develop skills that can be transferred to other learning situations.
Promoting learner autonomy is relevant in the field of applied linguistics due to the multiple benefits it brings to the process of learning a new language. However, despite the vast array of ...research on how to foster autonomy in the language classroom, it is difficult to find step-by-step processes to design syllabi and curricula focused on the development of learner autonomy. This paper presents a model of a successful English course, implemented at Universidad del Valle (Colombia), which is expected to serve as a practical guide to articulate the stages of design, implementation, and evaluation of an autonomy-fostering syllabus.
This paper examines how emergent technologies could influence the design of learning environments. It will pay particular attention to the roles of educators and learners in creating networked ...learning experiences on massive open online courses (MOOCs). The research shows that it is possible to move from a pedagogy of abundance to a pedagogy that supports human beings in their learning through the active creation of resources and learning places by both learners and course facilitators. This pedagogy is based on the building of connections, collaborations, and the exchange of resources between people, the building of a community of learners, and the harnessing of information flows on networks. This resonates with the notion of emergent learning as learning in which actors and system co-evolve within a MOOC and where the level of presence of actors on the MOOC influences learning outcomes.
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