A Psycholinguistic Sight on Autonomous Learners in Language Learning

Cihan University-Erbil as a Case Study

Abstract

In the last two decades, autonomous learning has received an obvious concern from specialists in the field of education particularly in higher education in Western universities. Autonomous learners have been characterized as those learners who adopt certain strategies to help them get their own learning. In Europe, an autonomous learner has formally become part of the language education and language assessment domain.  In this sense, and as a lecturer at Cihan University-Erbil, it has been noticed by the researcher that some students learn dependently whereas others are autonomous, self-dependent on their efforts to achieve a better learning outcome by the motivation they have to be positive participants with their English Language instructor through language learning classes. The purpose of this research is to investigate and develop learners' autonomy under the willingness and ability for second language learning in the higher education context. This is achieved in order to know to what extent students are aware of autonomous learning and what should they do to become successful autonomous learners. In this small-scale research, both qualitative and quantitative methods have been utilized in order to investigate and consider this phenomenon thoroughly from a psycholinguistic point of view. The results show that the majority of students are not autonomous learners as most of them depend on their instructors for learning English as a second language. This research comprises four sections. Section one is the introduction. Section two reviews some historical backgrounds and definitions. The third one illustrates the research methodology, questions, participants, and data collection. The fourth section accounts for a discussion of the findings of the study in addition to the conclusion at the end of the study.