Nurturing Language Learner Autonomy through Caring Pedagogic Practice

The discourse of learner autonomy has become popular in the current Chinese educational context. Learner autonomy was listed as a desirable goal in the recent National English Curriculum Standard for High Schools (Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, 2003), and by the China National Research Centre for Foreign Language Education, in arguing that one tendency in FLE in the next five years will be the encouragement of self-directed and self-access centred learning (China National Research Center for Foreign Language Education at Beijing Foreign Studies University, 2002). Yet, for many people, education in the Chinese context is thought to be a very passive affair, with Chinese students characterized as dependent (Cortazzi and Jin, 1999; Pierson, 1996). Learners are observed to favour rote learning (Harvey, 1985; Pierson, 1996), have a seeming obsession with marks or grades (Scollen, 1999) and tend to approach textbooks and teachers as authorities (Cortazzi and Jin, 1999). Students in China are further considered receptive to activities based on reactive autonomy (Littlewood, 1999), and this is usually thought to be the heritage of the Chinese traditional culture, especially that of Confucius.