Towards experiential foreign language education

Re-exploring the Relationship Between Autonomy and Assessment in Language Learning: A Literature Overview

“…Gradually, work within the Council of Europe progressed to development of the CEFR scales and the European Language Portfolio (ELP), with Little (2005; being involved both in Ireland and throughout Europe, with its development and exploitation, while Kohonen (1999Kohonen ( , 2000Kohonen ( , 2006 was involved within Finland. Oscarson (Oskarsson) -1978, 1989, 1998Dickinson -1987, 1992Little -1996, 2005Little & Perclová 2001Kohonen -1990, 1992, 1992a, 1992b, 1999, 2000, 2002Boud -1981, 1989Boud & Brew 1995Little (2005 has examined self-assessment rigorously from many angles, including the theoretical, the practical and philosophical. He sees the main outcomes from self-assessment being three: 1) he believes that for a learner-centred curriculum to make sense, it requires that learners be involved in the process of assessing curriculum outcomes, which includes their own learning achievements; 2) making self-assessment an integral part of assessment processes ensures that it is regarded by teachers and learners as a joint responsibility, but also opens up a wider perspective on learning processes; 3) in order for language learning in the formal context of the classroom to extend to learning from target language use, a learning toolkit that includes self-assessment is essential in order to be able to exploit opportunities for further explicit language learning.…”

“…Indeed, Little (1996, p. 31) goes as far as to claim that "classrooms in which selfassessment interacts fruitfully with peer-assessment have probably gone as far as it is possible to go in the promotion of learner autonomy". Kohonen (1990Kohonen ( , 1992aKohonen ( , 2001), on the other hand, sees autonomy and assessment as being within a framework of what he refers to as "experiential learning" and he also places language learning within the broader notion of "learner education". He (Kohonen, 2002, pp. 1-2) views language learners and teachers as being members of a "collaborative learning community", where each can develop fully through "a deliberate shift towards collaborative, active and socially responsible learning in school".…”

Editorial

“…Getting help within their zone of proximal development enables learners to transition from other-regulation to self-regulation, in other words, through this process, learners become more autonomous (Kohonen, 2001). Speaking about the kind of help learners give each other, Lena said, "One of the reasons why I tell them you can do this or you can do that and give them information is because I want them to know and to learn and to be able to do it alone later."…”

Autonomy and Reflection on Practice in a Self-Access Language Centre

“…By doing this, I am ideally in line with a pedagogy for autonomy in language education (among others, Dam, 1995;Little, Dam & Legenhausen, 2017) and approaches which involve learners as researchers (among others, Allwright & Hanks, 2009;Van de Poel, 2018), and advocate for giving them more responsibility to actively pursue meaningful questions (Hanks, 2015). Rooted in the tradition of critical pedagogy, experiential and inquiry-based learning (Dewey, 1963;Freire, 1973;Kolb, 1994;Kohonen, 2001), these approaches value individuals' reflection in and on practice (Schön, 1983).…”