It Depends on the
Students Themselves: Independent Language Learning at an Indonesian State School
Martin Lamb
There is continuing interest in the
notion of learner autonomy, both as an effective means and valid goal of a
language learning curriculum. However, the concept is recognised
as emanating from Western tertiary educational contexts and as open to question
in different sociocultural settings. This paper
reports on a study of language learning attitudes and activity among
adolescents in provincial Indonesia, during their first year in junior high school. Combining
questionnaire, interview and classroom observation data, the study found that
even younger learners are already learning English independently of their
teacher's prescriptions, both inside the classroom and outside formal school.
Their openness to the increasing learning opportunities in the local
environment is often not recognised in local
curricula, however, which instead impose a rigid diet of language items
transmitted by teachers and their textbooks and assessed in national exams. In
this local context, it seems that the promotion of appropriate forms of learner
autonomy is essential if the majority of school pupils are not to be frustrated
in their struggle to learn English.
------- ---- ----------
Lamb, M. (2004). 'It depends on the students
themselves': Independent language learning at an Indonesian
state school.
Language Culture and Curriculum, 17(3), 229-245.
Website: www.geocities.com/eltindonesia
Email: eltindonesia@yahoo.com