Week 7 : Developing teacher & learner Autonomy !!

Dear All

Like the past 6 weeks, this too has been a hectic week. We were exposed to 2 new concpets – learner autonomy and one computer classroom. The notion of learner autonomy is extremely relevant for English language teaching. It has acquired greater significance in recent times as the focus of the classroom has shifted from the teacher to the learner. In the Indian context where we are used to teacher-fronted traditions, striving for learner independence is a big challenge. I have been fortunate in this regard as I have been part of a Project to Teach English Communicatively. Its run by our department to train college lecturers of Rajasthan. This program was a collaborative venture between the state government and RELO(Regional English Language Office), New Delhi.

Trainings under this program introduced me to task based teaching focusing on activities, pair and group work. Now in this Webskills course, apart from the technological aspects and interventions, I have read a lot of material on themes and concepts which are important to the language learning set up. I am following all the discussion posts closely and have gained a lot of insight into learner autonomy. I have realized that learner empowerment and autonomy are closely interlinked with teacher autonomy. This awareness has made me realize my role and responsibility in empowering my students.

Preparing a lesson for a one computer class was not a difficult task this time as I had already made an interactive presentation last week. Moreover, we are used to just one computer classroom in a majority of our teaching sessions. I elaborated on that theme and developed a workshop on the use of advertisements for pedagogical purposes.

Reading, writing and commenting on blogs is always an enjoyable experience. Now I’ll have to work hard to polish my Project that has to be submitted for peer review. There’s only a few days left before I exchange the Project with Nizara, my partner for peer review. And I'm exhausted.....nonetheless as Natasa and Luisa while commenting on Helen's blog have remarked I don't want 'to miss a thing'. So there's still no resoite for us. We have to work even harder till we submit our final Projects.

Shaila