Time is running and we are approaching to the end. Honestly I don't like end days especially when it is about having knowledge, knowing people, having new contacts and relations.
The special touch of this week was having Rachel with us. I hoped to have more time with her but due to work and time, I could not realize that.
This week was about an issue which is related to every issue in learning/teaching process: autonomy. The first question that was raised by Rachel is weather it is acquired or inborn ? I really enjoyed reading comments and views of some of my course mates and from every post I learned something new and interesting. As a conclusion, we reached that autonomy is multifaceted and can never be treated separately. On one hand, learner autonomy is not the total neglect of teachers' control but it is learners' responsibility to take control over their learning but under teachers' guidance; so we can never deny the role of the teacher to make the wheal of learning move and to complete the cycle of learning as there is no motivation without teachers, no evaluation and sometimes more than that. However, learners' autonomy is based also on teachers' abilities and awareness which can be a part of teachers' autonomy. On the other side, autonomy is based on learners' motivation including all subsystems and aspects such as confidence, self actualization, self esteem.....Thus, we can not discuss autonomy without discussing the different factors (external and internal) that may affect learners' motivation. All the factors may interact either to develop autonomy or reduce it. Further, autonomy is also related learning strategies used by learners, where we find those who are aware, able to plan , manage their learning and make self-evaluation more autonomous than those who are not, which means those who are using meta-cognitive strategies are more successful in saving their time and energy to achieve their learning goals and objectives. Also, learners who know that language is for communication and tend to solve their communication problems using social/affective strategies are more successful especially in productive skills.
The other side of the week was working on my final project. As I mentioned in last week, I started my virtual class with a few students of third year to teach them how to write essays. George has chosen me to be his partner and I am so motivated to work together and exchange knowledge but I find him very active and sometimes I feel unable to reach him. He started sending me all what he is doing with his students and I am learning from him lot. Another extra benefit from the course is working with him.Concerning my project, my students finished all tasks (pre-tasks) of the experiment and they started writing their essays on google drive. My students really impressed me as I find them very motivated and doing well. They read the lessons, responded to my questions, filled in a survey, chose to work in pairs and finally joined google drive and created google docs and invited me to be their to give them feedback when writing their essays. I liked everything they are doing. I thought that I am changing only my ways and techniques of techniques but I think I started to change my beliefs as well and I am sure that changing beliefs is more effective then changing ways because beliefs will form our thoughts which will be translated in a form of actions as illustrated here (from http://www.mind-sets.com/html/mindset/beliefs.htm
It is said What you believe determines the world you live in, and by changing one, you change the other. so we don't need only to have dreams and interest to change but we must have a change inside us and have positive beliefs about what we do and what we want.
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