REFLECTIONS ON LEARNER AUTONOMY: CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

Learner autonomy is one of the recent concepts in the foreign language teaching theory which has become a buzz-expression ( Little, 1991) as it has become also central to understanding the changing role of the teacher on the one hand, and the attempts on the part of the professional educators to raise learners’ motivation in the teaching/learning process. However, the teachers’ and the learners’ attitudes to the idea of learner autonomy seem to vary in different cultural environments. Why it is so is a question of crucial importance for both teachers and students, as well as for the theoreticians of FLT, the policy makers in the field of FLT and the professional teachers. The aim of the article is to bring to the fore some considerations relating culture and education, on the one hand, and some objective drawbacks in the practical implementation of the autonomy concept, on the other. It is suggested that the teacher and the student are seen as an archetypal case of micro social organization revealing typical patterns of social behaviour that is specific for every national culture. It is the authors’ belief that a deeper analysis of a national culture would help identify and avoid the possible pitfalls if learner autonomy is accepted uncritically, and the educational requirements the teaching/learning process has to comply with if it is implemented on a global scale.