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 study explored the effectiveness and second language (L2) writers' perceptions of process-oriented writing, using portfolio-basedinstruction in a secondary English class at general school settings. The participants were 110 high school students enrolled in a private independent school in Gyeonggi. They learned to produce a four-paragraph-English-essay based on the process-oriented writing methodology, keeping a portfolio note for the entire semester. The instructor was a bilingual teacher of English whose native language is Korean. The 17 weeks' records written in the portfolio note were analyzed to portray whether the approaches enhanced overall performance and understandings about essay-writing. Findings revealed that the participants were satisfied with this approach and improved their writing skills using portfolio-based- instruction. For the sake of implementing the new assessment appropriately at public school settings, further studies are suggested to develop how to enhance classroom environment in order to increase the degree of learner-satisfaction in the essay-writing classes.