Autonomous Language Learning
This concept is innovative and encouraging to me. As an English teacher in Taiwan, I am kind of conditioned to be like one of the many traditional English teachers. In my class, students are passive learners for they are deprived of the rights to learn on their own. Of course, I can easily blame the whole education system. But deep inside my heart, I know that I can do something to make learning English much more fun for my students. To encourage students to learn on their own, I might ask them to choose some materials for their outside reading. Each one of them has to record what and how much they have learned for further assessment. A sense of community is important if I want my students to be autonomous language learners. Teachers’ support and assistance can help reassure students to be responsible in their own learning process. I like the idea of learning community; it brings the relationship between teachers and students closer. It’s not just about language learning per se. I’d like to cite the quotation to always remind my self “What really matters, we believe, is commitment.”