Language Teaching:

Introduction, Ice-breakers and

Learner Autonomy
Anthony Picot and Dr Mai Nguyen
02/10/2019

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 Aims:
• To introduce ourselves
• To give an overview of the unit
• To introduce the assignment options
• To critique ice-breakers and learner autonomy activities

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 Who are we?
• Dr Mai Nguyen
• Mr Tony Picot

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 Welcome to Language Teaching 2019/2020
Session Tutor Title Description
Session 1 Tony and Mai Introduction and Critical issues 1 and 2 Introductions, unit information and the assignment. Evaluation of Ice-breakers and tasks
for enhancing learner autonomy
Session 2 Tony Teaching Receptive Skills Teaching reading and listening: approaches, techniques and strategies

Session 3 Mai Teaching Speaking and Critical Issue 3 Teaching speaking: approaches, techniques and strategies and interaction

Session 4 Tony Teaching Writing and Critical Issue 4 Teaching writing; Approaches, techniques, and strategies and Materials Evaluation

No Class Employability Week Watch out for relevant announcements

No Class Other Activities Options’ Event, Study Skills Workshop, Academic Talk and Meeting your personal tutors

Session 5 Mai Teaching Grammar and Critical Issue 5 Teaching Grammar: approaches, techniques and strategies, Introduction to ELF

Session 6 Tony Teaching Lexis Teaching Lexis; Approaches, techniques and strategies.

Session 7 Mai Teaching Pronunciation and Critical Teaching Pronunciation; Approaches, techniques and strategies and Professional
Issue 6 Development

Session 8 Mai and Tony Assignment Clinic Working on your assignments

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Main themes of the unit

• Critical reflection on beliefs about English, teaching and learning.

• What research says about teaching language skills and systems.
• Various critical issues in Language Teaching.
• A mix of theoretical, practical and critical aspects of Language
Teaching

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Warmer - Some Key Abbreviations
Talk with a partner – what do these abbreviations stand for?
• ELT =
• ESL =
• EFL =
• EAL=
• ELF =
• WEs=
• TEFL =
• TESOL =
• SLA =
• CLT=
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Some Key Abbreviations
Talk with a partner – what do these abbreviations stand for?
• ELT = English Language Teaching
• ESL = English as a Second Language
• EFL = English as a Foreign Language
• EAL = English as an Additional Language
• ELF = English as a Lingua Franca
• WEs= World Englishes
• TEFL = Teaching English as a Foreign Language
• TESOL = Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
• SLA = Second Language Acquisition
• CLT= Communicative Language Teaching
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Ice-breakers

Let’s get to
know each
other!
1. Read through the following
sentences. Pick ONE
sentence and write down
your answer to it on the
given Post-it.
2. Go around the classroom and
show your answer to at least
THREE other classmates. Ask
and answer questions about
the things you have written.
For example, What does this
date mean?
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Now let’s reflect on what we did...

• How enjoyable did you find this

activity?
• How effective was it in helping you
• feel part of the class?
• with your language
practice/production?
• Would you have liked the teacher to
From L2 learners’ perspective carry out the task any differently?

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Now let’s reflect on what we did...
• What level of students will you use the activity with?

•  What are the linguistic and communicative aims of the

activity?

• What theories of learning underlie the activity?

•  What are some good and weak points of the activity?

• How do you compare this activity with the Human Bingo game
(Find someone who) that you did in Induction last week?
From L2 teachers’ perspective
•   Suggest a procedure for using a similar activity in your
classroom (Do you need to pre-teach anything? Would you introduce any
variations?) 10
Icebreakers/warmers and group dynamics in L2 teaching

• Why do some classes feel "good" and

some "bad"?

• Why do groups behave as they do? Can

we influence group events?

• How important is group dynamics for

foreign language teachers?

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Group dynamics (Dörnyei & Malderez, 1997; Dörnyei, 2007; Poupore, 2016)
• A group is a "resource pool that is greater in any given area than
the resources possessed by any single member”
• Structure and group composition, norms, roles and interaction patterns,
cohesion and climate, formation and development
• Groups can be a substantial source of motivation and directly
facilitate L2 learning
• quantity and quality of interaction between members (including task
motivation and language production)
• cooperation between students and the extent of individual involvement
• student behaviour, order and discipline in the classroom
• students' relationships with their peers and the teacher
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Icebreakers and warmers to create and maintain group dynamics
• Designed to be used in the first couple of meetings of a newly
formed group
• The purpose is to set members at ease, to get them to memorize
each others' names, and to learn about each other both at a
conscious and an unconscious level
• Initial breaking of the ice, though, may not be enough 
WARMERS

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The teacher as a group leader
1. Autocratic (or authoritarian) leadership: maintains complete
control over the group

2. Democratic leadership: shares some of the leadership

functions with the members by involving them in decision-
making about their own functioning

3. Laissez-faire leadership: performs very little leadership

behaviour at all
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 Dörnyei (2007, p. 726)
A group-sensitive teaching practice
• begins more autocratically to give direction, security, and impetus
to the group
• as the students begin performing, teachers initiate more
democratic control of the processes, increasingly relying on the
group’s self-regulatory resources.
• when the group further matures and begins to show its initiative, a
more autonomy-inviting, almost laissez-faire, leadership style might
be the most conducive to encouraging student independence.
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 Assessment A (3, 000 words Research Report Due January 2020)

Students identify an area for exploration and examination (a ‘puzzlement’) in

language teaching, and research the issue further by interviewing a language
learner or a language teacher.
• The 3,000-word report could include the following:
• the rationale behind the puzzlement;
• whether this unit has triggered this puzzlement, and how;
• what the existing literature says about the puzzlement;
• how the puzzlement has been addressed (what questions needed raising?
what data needed collecting?);
• how the participant (teacher or learner) helped address the puzzlement;
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Assessment B (3,000 words Materials Evaluation)
• a 3,000 word evaluation of a coursebook extract assessing its
suitability for a context of your choice. You should:
• analyse the theories and techniques for teaching the skills and
systems that are implicit in the extract
• make reference to both the literature and context
• suggest improvements or variations where suitable

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Learner Autonomy
What is Learner Autonomy?
• “The ability to take charge of one’s own learning” (Holec 1981:3).
• “A capacity for detachment, critical reflection, decision making and
independent action” (Little 1991; 4).
• It involves dimensions of control over language learning, including
“Day-to-day management of learning, the cognitive processes
involved in language acquisition and decisions about learning
content” (Benson 2001).
(Definitions from Benson (2016)
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Learner Autonomy
So, a broadly agreed definition of a 'good' language learner is one
who has the ability and willingness to take responsibility for learning.
The autonomous learner is one who takes decisions with regard to:
• areas of language to focus on
• activities to facilitate learning
• strategies to apply in learning (See Oxford’s 1990 SILL)
and actively seeks:
• information
• opportunities for practice
• assistance from proficient language users and general resources
(dictionaries, grammars, etc.)
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 Learner Autonomy
Interest in Learner Autonomy started in the 1970s. It now has its own IATEFL SIG and is the
source of much discussion in the following areas:
• Conceptions of autonomy in the context of the global spread of ELT
• Relationships between autonomy and the development of identity
• The status of autonomy in ‘postmethod pedagogies’
(Benson 2016)
• The nature of autonomy
• relationship between learner autonomy and effective language learning
• Efforts to foster autonomy
(Benson, 2011 in Cotterall 2017)
We are going to look at the last area; How can we help our learners to become more
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autonomous?
 Learner Autonomy
Cotterall (2017) adds some further ingredients, or ‘affordances’, for autonomous learning to take place with her pedagogical model of learner
autonomy:
1) Engagement - The students must be interested or motivated in some way to learn. Does the learning environment encourage the student to
become engaged with activities, topics, meanings, issues and concepts.
2) Exploration – students must be allowed to expand their understanding of topics and ideas that interest them. They should be asked real-
world questions of personal significance, which demand real answers.
3) Personalisation – Learners need to perceive personal relevance in the activities that they are asked to complete (activities that relate to their
pasts or futures or relate to their interests)
4) Reflection – Learners need to be able to consider whether the learning efforts that they have made have been efficient in terms of what they
have learned and how they have learned it (metacognition).
5) Support – Learners need resources to help them achieve tasks that are currently beyond their current ability. This could be in the form of
help from a teacher, feedback on writing drafts or reference materials.
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To sum up…
• In today’s session we presented the most important aspects of the unit
and the assessment
• We discussed the importance of ice-breakers and evaluated some
• We explored activities that would enhance learner autonomy

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Next week with Tony

Teaching receptive skills

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References

• Benson, P. (2016). Learner Autonomy from The Routledge Handbook of English Language Teaching
Routledge; New York
• Cotterall, S. (2017). The pedagogy of learner autonomy: Lessons from the classroom. Studies in Self-
Access Learning Journal, 8(2), 102-115
• Dörnyei, Z., & Malderez, A. (1997). Group dynamics and foreign language teaching. System, 25(1), 65-81.
• Dörnyei, Z. (2007). Creating a motivating classroom environment. From International Handbook of
English language teaching (pp. 719-731). Springer, Boston
• Oxford, R. (1990) Language Learning Strategies; What Every Teacher Should Know Newbury House: New
York (see https://richarddpetty.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/sill-english.pdf)
• Poupore, G. (2016). Measuring group work dynamics and its relation with L2 learners’ task motivation
and language production. Language Teaching Research, 20(6), 719-740.

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