October 20

I feel that the chapter on learner autonomy was one of the most useful chapters, at least for me. I particularly liked the section about "learner training" because it is true, our students do not only need to know the concpets that we are teaching them but they need to know how to learn (which I take to be the narrow view of learner autonomy). This is not just strategic preparation, but psychological. Studetns likely have all of these expectations about how a class works in their own countries when the way of teaching and the way the class works in America could be completely different. They may have to re-learn how to learn entirely because their previous strategies (assuming we are talking about adults who have strategies) could be very unhelpful in an American classroom. I like how Kuma listed out how teachers should go about helping students with this problem by explaining important points of teaching. For example, it should be informed, self regulated, contextualized, interactive, and diagnostic. Further, Kuma discusses a broad view of learnere autonomy, and this was personally my favorite. I think that the whole point of learning is so that you will soemday be able to know where you fit in this world, thus making you a happier more successful person. I imagine that ESL students have great struggles when deciding what they are capable of and deciding what they are going to do in this new country. They have significantly more worries, in my opinion, that natives, so teaching students in order to liberate them stuck out to me as being extremely important.

The next chapter talked about fostering language awareness. This chapter scared me a little bit because I know that I learned English at a very young age, and I feel as though I'm aware, but some of the examples made me think otherwise. For example the question "why is it three bedroom apartment and not three bedrooms apartment." Truthfully, I was unsure, and I'm scared this will someday happen in my own classroom. Therefore, I realize now that I cannot get by just by being a native speaker. How can I expect my students to be aware of their English and the reasons for their choices in English, when I myself don't take the time to figure these things out? It's much too hypocritical for my taste.