Autonomy and Foreign Language Learning in a Virtual Learning Environment: Advances in Digital Language Learning and Teaching
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Overview
Digitalised learning with its promise of autonomy, enhanced learner choice, independence and freedom, is an intuitive and appealing construct but closer examination reveals it to be a rather simplistic proposition, raising the following questions.
-What do we mean by autonomy?
-What are we implying about the role of the teacher, the classroom, and interaction between learners?
-What do we understand about the impact of technology on the ecology of the learning environment?
This book describes the use of a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) by a group of advanced English language learners in Mexico, comparing what students thought and what they did in response to the technology. The theoretical aim of the book is to work towards the construction of a theory of the development of autonomy and virtual learning in an EFL context. Enhanced understanding about the relationship between autonomy and technology has the potential to inform academics, software designers, materials writers, teacher educators, and teachers and to help learners in
their quest to acquire a foreign language.
Articulates a new theory about the nature of the relationship between autonomy and
language learning in a Virtual Learning Environment.
Practical ideas, applications and examples about the use and integration of a Virtual Learning Environments.
Articulates new theory about autonomy and virtual learning in the context of EFL.
Interrogates popular assumptions about autonomy, technology and language learning.
1. Paradox and Promise: autonomy, foreign language learning and technology
2. Understanding Autonomy: an overview
3. Technology: Virtual Promise or Virtual Reality - the pedagogical challenge
4. Shadow Dancing: autonomy in action
5. Learner Reflections about Learning English as a Foreign Language and the role of technology
6. Perceptions and Reality 1: Students’ response to using a VLE in computer-room lessons
7. Perceptions and Reality 2: Students’ free-time use of the VLE
8. An Ecological Perspective of Autonomy, Foreign Language Learning and Technology
9. Looking Back, Thinking Forwards
Bibliography
Index
This book is well written, with a clear and crisp style that allows the reader to follow the theoretical drive of the book without strain ... A thought-provoking exploration ... If you have an interest in learner autonomy, educational technology, or both, this book is definitely worth your time.
- Title: Autonomy and Foreign Language Learning in a Virtual Learning Environment
- Author: Miranda Hamilton
- Series: Advances in Digital Language Learning and Teaching
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2013
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Pages: 256
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781441189806, 9781472589767, 1472589769, 1441189807
- Resource ID: LLS:9781441189806
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T10:55:43Z
Miranda Hamilton is a Researcher in Cambridge looking at Learning Orientated Assessment with a focus on the use of technology. She recently completed her PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK.