Autonomy in Language Learning: Advising in Action

Christian Ludwig, Jo Mynard,

• Publisher: Candlin & Mynard ePublishing Limited
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780463810422
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Languages

This book explores advising in action by focusing on advising programmes and advising tools. There are 11 chapters including a foreword by Christopher Candlin. Chapters in the 'advising programmes' part of the book include details of ways in which support is given for learners (both inside and outside class) through the provision of advising.

Part One: Introductory Chapters

CHAPTER 1: Foreword: Some questions about Advising

Christopher N. Candlin, Macquarie University, Sydney

1.

The conference which provided the immediate impetus to this imaginative collection of papers was an innovative and inspiring affair. So much is clear from even a cursory inspection of its themes, clearly conceptualised, and transformed under the Editors’ guiding hands into action in the chapters themselves: practically founded, informed by experience, driven by a concern for understanding; in short, a classic example of what one can truly call praxis: the integration and mutual relevance of theory and practical accomplishment.

Given the above, it would be otiose for me to explore the papers themselves in this Foreword. They are there for readers to appreciate and to evaluate. What I perhaps can do is to offer some ideas and research challenges to the themes of the title, drawing on my own plenary talk at the conference itself.

We might begin by making the rather obvious point that neither autonomy nor advising is some static product. One cannot switch these constructs on and off like a light bulb: both are processes involving interactions among persons with histories over time and space. They involve persons with ‘motivational relevancies’ (Sarangi & Candlin, 2001) in terms of which they interpret the constructs and appraise their relationships and their values. Moreover, both constructs engage the other: if learner (and teacher) autonomy is a goal, then advising by peers is a means by which it may be achieved; similarly if advising is a desirable pedagogic process it has in some sense to be directed and targeted. One cannot simply ‘advise’ or ‘be autonomous’. Both constructs require evidence to be grounded, and indeed to be challengeable. They cannot simply exist as acts of faith.

2.

There is a very considerable literature now on the construct of autonomy, both generally and in relation to language teaching and learning (for references and extensive discussion of the construct, see Benson, 2011; Mynard and Carson, 2012). The chapters in this volume also provide references to much of the necessary literature for readers to follow up. This is less so in the case of advising, (though note here McCarthy’s recent paper (McCarthy, 2010) on building a framework of advising discourse), and accordingly it is this construct that I want to focus on in this Foreword.

Any process within a field involves products of some kind. This is as true of gardening as it is of language learning and teaching, and within both those fields, the process, as here, of advising is one such key element. The products of such processes, and the processes themselves, constitute data for analysis and appraisal, at once linguistic, discursive, cognitive and social. Any research into advising must account for three sets of data: textual (or perhaps better semiotic), narrative and interactional, and social and social psychological. A textual/semiotic focus involves us in modes of description (typically multimodal) (what persons say, write or show), a narrative and interactional focus engages us in exploring ethnographically grounded interpretive procedures (how people skilfully and co-constructedly accomplish what they wish to mean by what they say/write/show), and a social and social psychological focus which engages us in determining the extent to which persons within communities of practice negotiate and share beliefs and identities (how they are identified as members through what they say/write/show/mean). In a nutshell, advising requires us to analyse the linguistic, discursive, pragmatic and social psychological features of such a process among persons in defined sites of engagement (Scollon, 2001) and in relation to what we refer to below as key Activity types and Discourse types. Most importantly, the analysis of such features and their values can never be neutral. Such analysis is always set against what we might term their, and our (as analysts), ideological background, that is the set of systems, concepts, and values which we and they believe are involved in explaining things, connecting events in a structure of patterns and causes, and which involve selected crucial research sites and evaluating critical moments in such sites.

Activity types and Discourse types

Although Scollon (2001) does not refer specifically to Activity types as a construct in his chapter, we can infer that he sees these as a means of characterising what he calls sites of engagement, in a sense the structured and patterned ‘goings on’ of participants in interactions of various targeted kinds. Much earlier, Levinson in a well referenced article (Levinson, 1979), refers more specifically to Activity types as ‘fuzzy categories whose focal members are goal-defined, socially constituted, bounded events with constraints on participants, settings and so on, but above all on the kind of allowable contributions’ (p. 368)

Discourse types, on the other hand, as Sarangi explains ...

Table of contents

• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• About this Book
• About the Chapters in the Book
• Part One: Introductory Chapters
• CHAPTER 1: Foreword: Some questions about Advising
• CHAPTER 2: Introduction
• Part Two: Advising Programmes in Action
• CHAPTER 3: ALMS Counselling: Stories of Research and Practice
• CHAPTER 4: Establishing an English Learning Advising Service: A Case of the “English Learning Support Room” at Dokkyo University
• CHAPTER 5: Advising Language Learners in Large Classes to Promote Learner Autonomy
• CHAPTER 6: Advising for Teacher Autonomy in the Practice of Collaborative, Autonomous, and Reflective Learning
• CHAPTER 7: Peer Advising and Peer Advisee Roles: Function, Positioning and Moral Imperative
• Part Three: Advising Tools in Action
• CHAPTER 8: Creative Tools that Facilitate the Advising Process
• CHAPTER 9: Investigating the Focus of Advisor Comments in a Written Advising Dialogue
• CHAPTER 10: Can-Do Statements for Advisors
• Part Four: Conclusions and Notes
• CHAPTER 11: Conclusions
• Notes
• Publication Information