INTRODUCTION
For many years now, “autonomy” has been a popular focus for discussion in foreign
language teaching (e.g. Brookes and Grundy, 1988; Dam, 1988; Dickinson, 1987; Holec,
1981; Little, 1991; Dickinson and Wenden, 1995). This popularity is not surprising, since
the concept accords well with several of our central pedagogical preoccupations, notably
our view that language learning requires the active involvement of learners; our attempts
to introduce “learner-centred” methods; and our goal of helping learners to become
independent from their teachers in their learning and use of language. It is also supported
from outside language teaching by a general educational concern to help students
become more independent in how they think, learn and behave (cf. Boud, 1988;
Hammond and Collins, 1991).
The concept has served a valuable function in focusing our attention on these issues and
encouraging us to explore them with greater rigour. It has also served a valuable purpose
in linking discussions about language teaching with discussions in the wider educational
context. It may be, however, that the use of the term has now reached the stage which
“communicative” and “authentic” had reached by the end of the 1980s and which has
recently been reached by “task-based” and “learner-centred”: as central articles of language-
teaching faith, few people would wish (or dare) to disagree with them, but they
allow so many differences of interpretation that their value in discussion has diminished.
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