Learner Involvement at Arabian Gulf University Self-Access Centre

Abstract

The English Unit self-access centre (SAC) at Arabian Gulf University, Bahrain, has been an important part of our English for medical purposes programme for first year students for over 12 years. During that time, efforts have been made to involve these students in contributing to the SAC in order to augment their experience of learning English, personalize the facility and increase their responsibility for out-of-class English learning within the institutional setting. This article describes an initiative to elicit student contributions to the SAC, as well as evaluating how successful it was in achieving these aims. The article concludes with a recommendation to those directing similar small scale self-access centres to encourage student participation and involvement in all aspects of their running, without imposing pre-selected ideas and practices for autonomous learning that may not accord with the perceived needs and wishes of the SAC users themselves.