How can the development of learner autonomy be evaluated in an Academic English Course context?

Abstract

In this presentation, I discuss a few measurement tools that can be used to evaluate the development of learner autonomy in the context of an academic English course. My discussion will be based on a study I conducted in an academic English course which has a self-access language learning (SALL) component at a Hong Kong university. First, asking students to define learner autonomy and comparing their definitions given at the beginning and end of the course was found to be an effective way to evaluate the development of students’ metacognitive awareness. Second, the study shows that evidence of learner autonomy and students’ different autonomous development trajectories can be identified from the data collected from periodic individual interviews with the students and their SALL progress reports and SALL reflections during the English course. Based on the empirical data collected from the study, I developed a 4-level model of learner autonomy which operationalises the autonomy construct and enables researchers and SALL practitioners to measure the level of learner autonomy of an individual at a specific time and to describe the changes in the level of learner autonomy of an individual over time.