Abstract One of the objectives of teaching a foreign language is to enable the learners to become autonomous, that is the ability to continue learning the foreign language without the teachers’ assistance. Autonomous learners are learners who are responsible for their own learning. Thus, it is very important for the learners to learn and understand how to become autonomous learners. The present paper deals with the discussion of how to promote learners’ autonomy. Key words: autonomous learner, learning theory, learning strategy

1. HOW TO PROMOTE
OUTONOMOUS
LEARNERS
Abstract
One of the objectives of teaching a foreign language is to
enable the learners to become autonomous, that is the ability to
continue learning the foreign language without the teachers’
assistance. Autonomous learners are learners who are responsible
for their own learning. Thus, it is very important for the learners to
learn and understand how to become autonomous learners. The
present paper deals with the discussion of how to promote learners’
autonomy.
Key words: autonomous learner, learning theory, learning
strategy
1

2. Introduction
Through years of observation, we, teachers, have witnessed a
lot of students especially from the English department who have
struggled in their study but unable to make significant progress.
There are several factors which contribute to such a failure. To
mention just a few is the
inefficiency of TEFL situation such as the insufficient time
allotment, overpopulated classrooms, contradictive methods, etc.
This paper, however, in not an attempt to cope with such problems,
but intends to give contribution to improve the learners to help
themselves in acquiring and learning foreign language.
For the above objectives, I will present the elaboration within
three parts. The first part of this paper is concerned with the
discussion on autonomous learners. The second part deals with
learning strategies, and lastly, the third part presents some
examples of people who have been learning English in Indonesia.
Their reflections focus on how they have managed to learn
English. The names used here in this paper are fictitious.
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3. 1. Autonomous Learners
To discuss what is actually meant by autonomous learners, let
me first talked about a theory of language learning. Actually there
are a number of language learning theories, however, allow me to
discuss just one of them, that is the cognitive theory by Anderson
(1983).
According the theory learner first acquires the declarative
knowledge of the foreign language. The learner knows about the
rules of grammar and vocabulary. Declarative knowledge is
usually gained quickly; but it is still a static piece of information.
The learner is unable to use it fluently and automatically yet.
Second, the learner, then, acquires the procedural
knowledge. After a long period of time and a lot of practice and
extensive exposure, the learner will be able to use the acquired
declarative knowledge. S/he will be able to use the language
fluently—applying the rules of grammar and vocabulary
accurately, automatically, and fluently. Procedural knowledge is a
dynamic piece of information, meaning that the learner can
develop her/himself linguistically.
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4. In order to acquire the above knowledge, the learner at least
has to go through three stages: cognitive, associative, and
autonomous (Wenden, 1992). First, in the cognitive stage, s/he
learns the new language by observing fluent speakers, by careful
attention to explanation about L2 forms and by doing discrete
exercises on grammar, vocabulary, and formulas, such as
greetings, leave takings, etc. This is declarative knowledge.
After a long time of learning and exposure, the learner will
enter into associative stage. In this stage s/he would be able to
identify and correct errors, to strengthen elements of four skills,
and then fluency (procedural knowledge) starts.
Lastly, in the final stage, autonomous stage, s/he becomes a
fluent user of the L2. The application of the four skills has become
automatic and virtually error free. His/her skills become effortless,
and learning new items becomes smooth and easy—not a mental
burden.
A close observation we have made has shown us that there
are a lot of students graduated from Universities who still reach at
the so-called cognitive stage and possess only the declarative
knowledge. They even have not entered the associative stage since
they cannot see their own errors and, thus, still a long way away
from the autonomous stage possessing procedural knowledge.
4

5. Anyhow, we have to be optimistic that perhaps many of them
can be helped in one way or another by means of learning
strategies.
2. Learning Strategies
Oxford (1990: 8) defines learning strategies as specific
actions taken by learners in order to help them understand, store,
and use language easier, faster, and more enjoyable. She further
classifies learning strategies into two broad categories: strategies
which directly involve the target language (TL) and second,
strategies that indirectly involve the target language (1990:37).
First, strategies that directly involve the target language are
those which require mental processing of the language. They
include memory strategies, cognitive strategies, and compensatory
strategies. Memory strategies help students to store and retrieve
information. Cognitive strategies enable learners to understand and
produce language such as reasoning, analyzing, taking notes,
summarizing, etc. Lastly, compensation strategies help learners to
use the language despite their lack of necessary knowledge of the
language (1990:37).
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6. Second, strategies which indirectly involve the target language
are those which require learners to use other techniques of
learning. They include metacognitive strategies, affective
strategies, and social strategies.
Metacognitive strategies help learners to organize the learning
process such as organizing, planning, and evaluating their learning.
Affective strategies help learners to regulate emotions,
motivations, and attitudes. And lastly, social strategies help
learners to acquire the language through communication with
others.
These strategies are important for language learners because
they serve as a means for being autonomous learners, the
improvement of proficiency, the growth of self-confidence, and the
development of communicative competence. Oxford (1990) further
argues that learning strategies, if appropriately employed, can
enhance communicative competence which covers four aspects:
grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse
competence, and strategic competence.
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7. Grammatical competence indicates the degree of mastery of
the language form including vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation,
spelling, and word formation. Sociolinguistic competence shows
the ability to understand and use the language appropriately in
different social contexts. It may includes the knowledge of speech
such as apologizing, agreeing, persuading, disagreeing, etc.
Discourse competence indicates the ability to combine and
synthesize ideas above the sentence level coherently and
cohesively. Lastly, strategic competence indicates the ability to
use techniques or strategies in order to overcome limitations in the
language or to get the message across.
The following language learning strategies have been
synthesized from interviews, direct observation, empirical
investigations, insights from experience language learners and
teachers, and theoretical arguments about the nature of language
learning tasks. These excerpts are taken from Wenden (1992: 41-
42).
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8. a. Successful language learners have insight into their own
learning styles and preferences as well as the nature of the task
itself. They adopt a personal style or a positive learning
strategy that fits their needs and preferences. They can adapt to
various methodologies and materials and know how to find,
sort, analyze, synthesize, and classify retrieval relevant
linguistic data. Poor learners, by contrast, lack insight into their
own learning difficulties and the nature of the task. They are
often frustrated by methods that are not appropriate for them.
They cannot organize linguistic input into a coherent system;
instead, they regard the incoming data as an untidy assortment
of separate items.
b. Successful learners take an active approach to the learning
task. They select learning objectives for themselves and
deliberately involve themselves in the second language. They
will seek out opportunities to communicate in the target
language, with native speakers whenever possible, and to
understand acts of communication in fullest sense. They are
sensitive to connotative and sociocultural meaning. The poor
learners, on the other hand, often lean too heavily on the
teacher and adopt a passive, detached attitude.
8

9. c. The good language learners are willing to take risks. These
students accept their status as ‘linguistic toddlers’. They are
willing to appear foolish sometimes in order to communicate,
using any means at their disposal to covey meanings. This
often involves the use of circumlocution, paraphrase, cognates,
or gestures, and may sometimes involve the creation of new
words by analogy with familiar form.
d. Good language learners are good guessers. They use clues
effectively and make legitimate inferences. For examples,
successful reading comprehension strategies that involve
guessing include using syntactic and contextual clues to
determine meaning and reading around unknown words. Good
language learners constantly search for clues to meaning, be
they from context, situation, explanation, trial and error, or
translation.
e. Good language learners are prepared to attend to form as
well as to content. They constantly look for patterns, classifying
schema, and rule-governed relationship. They monitor their
own speech and others’, seeking correction from informants.
9

10. f. Successful learners actively attempt to develop the target
language into a separate reference system and try to think in
the target language as soon as possible. They purposefully
revise their evolving system by testing hypothesis, learning
from errors, and reorganizing the system when preliminary
rules do not seem to apply.
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11. g. Good language learners generally have a tolerant and out going
approach to the target language. They are able to put
themselves in another person’s place, identifying to some
extend with the native speakers.
3. Some stories of English Language Learners
a. Charles Kasidi
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12. Charles started learning English at a junior high school
(SMP) in a small town in Central Java, and it was quite boring,
learning grammar most of the time and reading was practically
neglected. He then studied at an Islamic junior teachers’
college (PGA) and English was taught once a week by a
Physical Education teacher and then by a mathematics teacher.
After graduating from PGA he was fortunate enough to be
accepted as a student of English Department as he had to
compete with a lot of candidates (only 40 candidates were
selected). Only at the English Department did he start learning
English seriously, diligently and painfully. As a graduate from
PGA his English was extremely poor, i.e. no receptive nor
productive skills, and yet his lecturers assumed that all their
students had a fairly good English foundation and thus they
used English all the time. It is only understandable that Charles
was desperate and suffered a lot, as he belonged to the bottom
of the class. In order to catch up with his classmates he had to
work terribly hard for two years, and finally he won the
scholarship from Sebelas Maret foundation. How did he
manage to succeed?
12

13. In order to improve his speaking skill he and his friends who
were also poor in English set up a study club, meeting almost
three times a week. The reason the club only consisted of poor
student was that if it had good student, the poor student would
keep quiet most of the time. During conversation, they
discussed any thing, the main objective was to practice
speaking English. To improve his fluency and pronunciation,
he read a text aloud, recorded it, played it back and check the
pronunciation, improved it and recorded again he repeated this
procedure several times until he felt satisfied with his
pronunciation. In addition he also looked up in the dictionary
for the pronunciation of words he did not know. To further
improve his speaking ability, whenever he did not understand
what the teacher was explaining, he encouraged himself to ask
him/her for explanation without being afraid of making
mistakes. To practice with native speakers he would go and
visit native speaker in Solo and record their conversation. This
improved his listening skill to.
13

14. In order to improve his reading ability Charles read very
simple stories of the elementary level and stories whose plots
he had been familiar with, so that he could concentrate only the
language. One of his obstacles of his poor reading ability was
his poor vocabulary, thus he worked hard on it with his
dictionary, listing them in a note book, pasting them on the wall
in his room and memorizing them. However, he found that
memorizing individual words was not particularly effective as
he easily forgot them. The new learning strategy he used was to
directly use the new words in his sentences. He switched from
using a bilingual dictionary to a monolingual one. In addition
he did not look up words in dictionary to often when he was
reading text; he simply guessed the meaning from the context.
Whenever and wherever he went out, he brought a pocket a
dictionary with him so he could check the meaning of
unfamiliar words he came across, such as film posters, labels
on food, drink, medicine, etc.
14

15. Charles thinks that listening is the most difficult skill. To
improve this skill, he played commercial cassettes over and
over again to listen and to comprehend the massage as well as
to identify the smallest detail of sound he could not catch.
When he failed to understand a word or sound after several
attempts, he gave up and opened the accompanying written text
to see what he had missed. In addition, he also listened to
English by radio from ABC and BBC.
Writing was found to be a difficult skill for Charles to. He
learned writing by practicing the theories from his lecturers and
asked his bright friends to correct it.
b. Jessica Maryatun
15

16. Jessica is Charles’s classmate and she practically equals
to Charles. Jessica is an example of and auditory learner who
has powerful memory. She did not write much when she
attended a language class, but she remembered what had been
thought. Even now she still remembers the lessons she learned
when she was at junior and senior high school. When she was
at junior and senior high schools she did not take English
seriously. She began learning it seriously when she was a
student of the English department. She claims that the
Audiolingual Method and the teachers accounted for much of
her success in mastering English. She supplemented her
English lesson by listening to English radio broad cast and
television.
To master speaking she recorded her voice to check her
pronunciation, repeating native speakers’ and her teachers’
expression, practicing monologues in front of the mirror by
pretending to speak with someone or delivering a speech in
front of the audience. She went and visited native speakers in
Solo and made friends with them.
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17. c. Robert Baggio
In contras with Jessica, Robert is not a particularly good
student. His proficiency is far below standard required for and
English department graduate. He never spoke in class because
he was afraid to make mistakes particularly as his mastery of
grammar was limited.
He learned pronunciation by reading aloud; and reading
aloud was a must for him other wise he could not understand
the text nor would he be able to remember the words either. In
addition he also imitated the native speaker commentator or
reporter on TV for correct pronunciation. His grammar is
hopeless and yet he claimed that learning grammar is actually a
much simpler process than absorbing vocabulary and
pronunciation. When he studied grammar he analyzed it in
detail; but when he could not understand it he never ask for
help.
He learned vocabulary by using cards and memorizing
three words a day or by relating words to objects. Reading
poetry is his favorite. He loves reciting poems in front of a
mirror ‘like an actor’. His love of music is insatiable and he
would memorize the words used in the lyrics.
Comments:
17

18. Charles definitely is a highly motivated extrovert possessing
high language aptitude, that is why he could catch on with his
classmates and even out do them so that he could win a scholarship
due to his performance. His pro-active attitude, responsibility for
his own learning, being uninhibited, etc.- all of these indicate that
he is an example of a good language learner.
Jessica’s success is attributed to her intellegence, motivation
(being pro-active, seeking exposure to language, and being
uninhibited), and high discipline. The audiolingual method seems
to accelerate her rate of learning. She admits that her motivation
was originally instrumental rather than integrative, that is to
survive. She is an autonomous learner as indicated by her pro-
active attitude, that is she was willing to take pains recording her
own speech, etc.
Robert admits that he is an introvert, a very shy person. In
class, he never uttered a word as he was afraid of making mistakes.
In addition, he gives up easily, particularly when learning
grammar. He seems to need encouragement, guidance, and help
from time to time. He relies heavily on someone else. He is an
example of a learner whose metacognitive strategies are
inappropriate.
Conclusion
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19. There is the need for every learner to have knowledge on
foreign language learning strategies in order to become
autonomous language learners. As shown in the above examples
that to a large extent language learning success much depends on
the learner himself. Researches indicate that differences in
achievement in foreign language learning are often related to
different strategies use (Wenden, 1992). In order to become
autonomous, learners need to know different learning strategies,
and strategies really can be learned.
To conclude, one thing should always be remembered that
there is no single set of uniform learning strategies which would
guarantee success for everybody. Each individual has his/her own
preferred learning strategies.
References
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20. Anderson, J. (1983) The Architecture of Cognition.
Cambridge, Mass.: Havard University Press.
Chamot, A.R. (1987) “The Learning Strategies of ESL
Students” in A. Weden and J. Rubin (Eds.) Learner
Strategies in Language Learning. 1987:71--83
O’Malley, J.M. and Chamot, A.U.(1985) “Learning Strategies
Applications with Students of English as a S4econd
Language”. TESOL Quarterly. 19/3. 1985: 557--581.
--- (1990) Learning Strategies and Srcond Language
Acqiusition. Cambridge CUP.
Oxford, R.L. (1990) Language Learning Strategies. Boston:
Heinle and Heinle Publishers.
Sadtono, E. “Wanted: Good Language Learners”, Surakarta: The
Regional TEFLIN Seminar II, 1996.
Tika, Gusti, “Learning Strategies of Good and Weak Students:
Implication to Materials Design in Teaching”, Ujung
Pandang: The 42nd
TEFLIN Seminar, 1994.
Wenden, Anita, (1992) Leaner Strategies for Learner- Autonomy.
London: Prentice Hall.
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