The influence of personality and social background upon the portrait of an autonomous language learner: The study of Higher Primary foreign language learners

Abstract

Recent ministerial requirements in the core curriculum of general education, demand of teachers, and particularly language teachers that they create such environment in and beyond the classroom in which learners have an opportunity to gain the ability to plan, organize, evaluate as well as take responsibility for their own learning process . This phenomenon, known as learner autonomy , is the key to successful language learning. Success in foreign language learning evidently correlates with autonomous learning, as evidenced by numerous discussions in literature, Borg and Al-Busaidi (2012), Nunan (1991), Omaggio (1978), Rubin and Thompson (1983). What makes an autonomous and thus successful foreign language learner? This is a highly complex process which encompasses a variety of variable factors such as learner attitude towards a foreign language, learner motivation and organizational skills as well as individual characteristics devoted to age, gender, learner cognitive and learning styles, the choice of learning and communication strategies, intelligence, memory and various disorders which may hamper the development of autonomy. This paper aims at demonstrating how learner personality and social background influence learner autonomy in and off the classroom setting. The paper is supported by the study, carried out in 2013/2014, of various forms of autonomous behaviours generated by four English teachers and 115 English learners at the age of 11, 12 and 13 from two school backgrounds who were intensively observed during English lessons for a period of nine months and interviewed on the basis of the questionnaires. Since the study is devoted to various aspects of autonomous learning, only the data concerning an autonomous language learner is presented in this paper.