EFL learners' conceptions of learner autonomy

Promoting learner autonomy in EFL classes has been one of the most fundamental objectives of education. It is known that Turkish educational system has traditional educational methods that constrain autonomous language learning. Learner autonomy is a concept that has many dimensions. The concern of this study is to find out EFL learners' conceptions of different autonomous behaviours that learners need to have in their learning. Those areas include learners' readiness for self-direction, learners' conceptions of independent work, learners' beliefs related to the role of class and teacher, learners' conceptions of the role of the teacher in explanation/supervision, learners' attitudes towards particular language learning activities, learners' readiness to share responsibility in selection of content, learners' roles in determining objectives and self-evaluation, learners' conceptions of external assessment in their motivation, and learners' attitudes towards the culture of the language they are learning. As the data collection tool Autonomy Learner Questionnaire was used. The survey was administered to 114 7th grade students at Şehit Selahattin Elemantary School in Hakkari, Turkey. The data analysis was carried out through quantitative (frequencies, percentages) analysis techniques. The findings of the study showed that while the learners have more autonomy over some aspects of learning, they have less readiness and awareness over the others.