In a teaching environment where all instructors have to teach the same class materials within limited time, from which they have to create the same test items, it is very difficult to create some space that could foster learner autonomy (LA). The purpose of the study is to examine the effects of LA on college students’ academic achievements, task perceptions, and classroom engagement at a Korean university. The study was undertaken in four sections of the same beginner level college English course over the course of a semester. A total of 84 students enrolled in the college English class participated in the study, of which 41 students were assigned to the control group and 43 students to the experimental group. The students’ learning outcomes between the control and experimental groups, their responses to the LA task, and the instructor’s observations of the students’ learning process were analyzed. The study revealed that the students in the experimental group produced significantly higher scores in their exams than those in the control group. Also, compared to its counterpart, the experimental group appeared to engage in the learning process more actively. Educational implications for promoting LA in EFL college classes are discussed.
The purpose of this study is to analyze teachers' questioning patterns in EFL classes, and propose a new set of classification based on the interaction flow that a question initiates and the teachers' intention of questions in language classroom. Data were collected from five advanced EFL classes. Six categories of teacher questions were observed and two types of interactions following the initial questions were found. The interactions were usually opened by the teacher, which confirmed the general conception, and the types of interactions were mostly chosen by the teacher's preference and the activity the class was doing.