As teachers we take delight and pride in seeing our learners succeed, not just in our classes but also in their personal lives and into the future. Much of this depends on their ability to ‘see the bigger picture’. Learning is hard and to stick with it, even when there is no teacher around, requires finding reasons to put in the effort. Learners are not often asked to do this and so don’t develop the skill to question why they are doing what they are doing. It is therefore important to consider ways to give learners greater control over their learning, and to do so in such a way that prepares, supports and ultimately empowers them to become more autonomous (Reinders, 2020). In this article we will look at practical ways to help learners become aware of their own and teachers’ reasons for learning and see how this focus on personal learning aims forms an ongoing, iterative (recurring) part of the autonomous learning process.

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.

This interview study aims at exploring how two Korean college graduates strive autonomously to manage their English world before, during and after college-graduation. The participants were two very autonomous students out of 34 students the researcher met at a 15-week autonomy-based English Speaking/Writing class at a college in 2003. Two major findings emerged from the interview data collected in April 2005: (1) B"s initial interest in English came from teachers" urgings to get good test scores, but his visit to America and Australia made him more interested in learning communicative English; (2) S"s interest in non-Korean people and countries, inspired by her first English teacher, made her go abroad and practice English very actively in and beyond Korea. The findings shed light on a critical issue concerning the application of the learner autonomy theory with Korean students who learn English in Korean educational contexts: the limit and effectiveness of classroom-English-learning. Pedagogical implications of the findings are added at the end.

This study aims to investigate how some Korean primary school students practiced autonomous English-learning while they exchanged email letters with foreign friends for 20 weeks. In order to achieve triangulation of the study, the following data resources were used: email letters exchanged and uploaded at an Internet cafe, a survey implemented in April and July as an autonomy measuring instrument, the informants’ comments on keypal activities written in July, two times of individual interviews and the researcher’s observation report. One major finding emerged from the data is that there were four types of autonomy development. Some implications drawn from the study findings are added for future keypal-based English-learning autonomy development programs.