Links & Letters 7, 2000 29-48

The thick end of the wedge: encouraging

autonomous learning by advanced-level
ESL university students
Tony Lynch
University of Edinburgh

September 1999

Abstract

Much of the literature on language learner autonomy has its roots in foreign language
contexts, where learners have limited opportunities for interaction with the target lan-
guage. It is generally assumed that learners and teachers working in an English as a Sec-
ond Language (ESL) setting are in a relatively privileged position to take advantage of the
greater opportunities for language practice beyond the language classroom. However,
converting potential learning opportunities into opportunities taken is not necessarily
straightforward, even for advanced-level learners in a linguistically rich ESL context. In
this paper I discuss a project to create learner education materials for international stu-
dents at the University of Edinburgh whose English is sufficiently high to exempt them
from the University’s language support programme. The materials are designed to help
them to realise, in both senses, the language learning potential of their daily encounters
with English in an academic environment. I describe the materials’ origins, comment on
a sample unit, report the responses of student users, and outline future development of
the materials.
Key words: English for Academic Purposes, Learner Autonomy, Learner Training, Mate-
rials Design.

Table of Contents
1. Introduction: ‘training’ or ‘education’? 6. Summary
2. Background to the project Acknowledgements
3. Language learning and language use References
4. Materials for local learner education Appendix: Profile sample
5. Discussion Resources
30 Links & Letters 7, 2000 Tony Lynch

1. Introduction: ‘training’ or ‘education’?

The concept of learner training can be traced back to research in the early
1970s into the characteristics of ‘the good language learner’ (Naiman et al.,
1975; Rubin, 1975). Since then we have seen the regular publication of
studies based on a positivistic interpretation of that research, in the sense that
they claim that people can be trained or guided to become more effective
learners of a foreign or second language (L2), especially if that strategy train-
ing is informed and explicit (Wenden and Rubin, 1987; Willing, 1988;
O’Malley and Chamot, 1990; Wenden, 1991, 1995; White, 1995; Cotter-
all, 1995; Goh, 1997).
Although the published research is generally upbeat about what strategy
training can achieve, some commentators have been more sceptical. Rees-
Miller (1993, 1994), for example, argued that we should be much more cir-
cumspect about the benefits claimed for strategy training and that there was a
need for longitudinal studies of its effectiveness. Similarly, Tudor (1996) warned
that “it would be misleading to assume that… strategies can be neatly peda-
gogised and ‘taught’ to learners in a straightforward manner” (Tudor, 1996: 39).
Apart from matters of substance and impact, there has also been dis-
agreement over whether the term training is really appropriate. Some have
objected to its mechanistic and low-level implications and have preferred to
use learner development or learner education (Lynch, 1988a; Sheerin, 1989,
1997; Voller and Pickard, 1996; Sinclair, 1996). Rees-Miller, again, was
especially critical: “Particularly for adult learners, terms such as learner train-
ing or learning to learn have the unfortunate implication that students are
inadequate at learning” (1994: 684). (For fuller discussion of terminology, see
Tudor, 1996 and Benson, 1997).
In addition to book-length publications offering strategic guidance and
awareness-raising, such as Rubin and Thompson (1982), Brown (1989), and
Ellis and Sinclair (1989), it is now increasingly common for ‘learner train-
ing’ elements to be included in global skills textbooks (for recent reviews, see
Lake, 1997 and Sinclair, 1999). Naturally, the writers and publishers of com-
mercial training materials attempt to reach as wide a readership as possible,
and therefore to make their advice relevant to a variety of learning contexts.
On the other hand, Stratford (1993) found evidence that language learners
preferred materials with a local orientation to those written for a commer-
cial readership. This parallels Clarke’s discussion of the dissonance between
SLA researchers’ search for findings that are ‘generalisable’ and classroom
teachers’ search for the ‘particularisable’ (Clarke, 1994). It is perhaps for this
reason that one finds relatively few accounts of locally rooted training mate-
rials projects in traditional journals – though the advent of electronic pub-
lishing is now changing that, with the development of networks such as
AUTO-L and the AILA Scientific Commission on Learner Autonomy1.

1. See the annotated bibliography (Internet resources) in this issue.

Encouraging autonomous learning by advanced-level ESL students Links & Letters 7, 2000 31

In terms of the two broad design choices I have touched on in this sec-
tion —training versus education, and universal versus local— the materials
development project to be discussed in this paper was conceived as educational
and local. Central to the project is the belief that we can help individuals to
make the most of opportunities for learning ‘out there’, beyond the English
language classroom —as illustrated by local projects by Cotterall (1995) in
an ESL context and Ryan (1997) in an EFL context. As we shall see, the Uni-
versity of Edinburgh materials are designed to help international students on
degree courses at Edinburgh to learn by and for themselves, without access
to a teacher or class. (From this point on, I will use student to refer to the role
of a registered participant in a university degree and learner to refer to the role
of learning a language).

2. Background to the project

Applicants to the University of Edinburgh who are not native speakers of Eng-
lish are required to provide evidence of their linguistic proficiency, normally in
the form of a minimum IELTS or TOEFL score achieved in their home coun-
try. Having been accepted, they also take the University’s Test of English at
Matriculation (TEAM), which identifies areas in which they may benefit from
language support classes. These run during the academic year, in parallel with
their academic studies, and are organised and taught by the Institute for Applied
Language Studies (IALS) under the English Language Testing and Tuition
programme (ELTT) funded by the University. In a typical year about 120 of
the 200 postgraduate students who take TEAM are required or recommended
to take English courses on the basis of their TEAM scores.
This paper focuses not on the students who attend the English support
classes, but on those individuals whose TEAM score is too high (above 7.0
IELTS or 600 TOEFL) for them to get an automatic place on our English
courses. They are offered a number of alternatives. Firstly, we can put them
on a waiting list for the English course(s) they want to take. If there even-
tually turn out to be places free, we allocate them to individuals according
to their score on the relevant TEAM section; those with the lowest ‘high’
scores (e.g. 61% for a course with a ceiling of 60%) are given priority.
Secondly, in the case of writing courses we can offer them copies of the
course materials, adapted for use by independent learners. A third option
—particularly for those who want to focus on their oral fluency— is to sug-
gest they arrange a ‘language exchange’ with a British person learning their
language, either at IALS or in another University department (Voller and
Pickard, 1996). This involves meeting the British learner once a week for
an hour of conversation, half of which is in English and half in the student’s
language.
The notion of a ‘high’ score on the test is, of course, subjective. When
IALS staff talk of high-scoring students, we are thinking in institutional
terms: a high TEAM score is one above the level at which the student runs
32 Links & Letters 7, 2000 Tony Lynch

a no more than average risk of failing the degree course (Lynch, in press).
With limited teaching resources, we have to concentrate language support on
students whose English level suggests greater risk. However, from the indi-
vidual student’s point of view, the situation is rather different: when they com-
pare their English with that of their native-speaker peers, ESL students invari-
ably feel at a distinct disadvantage.
Given that the University provides English support classes for most inter-
national students, many ‘high scorers’ are disappointed, to put it mildly,
when we tell them that they are exempted —or excluded, depending on
one’s point of view— from our English programme. What they want, they
insist, is a place on an English course. When I suggest to them that there is
little to be gained from joining a group of less competent learners, a few of
these advanced learners do accept the point, but the majority continue to ask
for a course place, in preference to all other alternatives.

3. Language learning and language use

A gap between perceived wants and observed needs is nothing new, but the
case of these advanced learners raises the wider issue of the relationship
between language learning and language use, and the extent to which learn-
ers’ and teachers’ views of that relationship may be in conflict. A central
assumption in the language teaching profession is that the teacher’s task is to
help language learners to become actual or potential language users, in other
words, to transfer what they have practised in an instructional setting to
real-life situations. This movement from ‘artificial’ learning to ‘authentic’
use is shown in Figure 1, in terms of the relationship between form and
meaning in instructed classroom learning (Littlewood, 1997: 87).
Reading the diagram from left to right, we can see it as representing a
sequence of instruction, beginning with a predominant focus on form, which
is gradually phased out along the four positions of the continuum, so that the
focus on form is eventually replaced by orientation to meaning. By the time
the learners reach the right-hand edge of the diagram, they are using English
for authentic purposes, in the sense of lifelike or realistic communication,
albeit within the walls of the L2 classroom.
The upper half of Figure 1 shows a triangular ‘wedge’ of increasingly
communicative language practice. When we consider the advanced learners
‘exiled’ from support classes at Edinburgh, we can regard them as already at
(or beyond) the right-hand edge of the diagram, the thick end of the wedge:
they are already involved in authentic, meaningful use of English in their dai-
ly lives, spending five or six hours a day immersed in academic English (lec-
tures, practical classes, library research) and possibly as many again using Eng-
lish in their social lives, at least in the case of those sharing accommodation
with students with whom they communicate in English.
From the teacher’s perspective, it is ironic that the ‘exiles’ are so insistent that
what they need in order to raise their proficiency further is to join an English
Encouraging autonomous learning by advanced-level ESL students Links & Letters 7, 2000 33

Pre-communicative Communicative Structured Authentic

work practice communication communication

Focus on meanings

1 2 3 4

Focus on forms

Figure 1. Language use and language learning.

class: as students are busy with real-life L2 communication, they are in what
many teachers would consider an ideal position for language learning. So our
main pedagogic task is to persuade them that they can harness their current
communicative experiences in English as an academic medium - in other
words, that they can derive learning from use. To do this requires a reversal of
the conventional flow of instruction (from left to right in Figure 1), so that they
move leftwards from actual use towards the ‘noticing’ of forms and patterns in
English discourse. In order to facilitate that shift, we have now added a fourth
alternative to those mentioned in Section 2: a set of learner materials designed
to help them maximise their learning opportunities in Edinburgh, away from
the sheltered familiarity of the English language classroom.

4. Materials for local learner education

Our materials aim to show learners ways of exploiting their own English input
and output as data for analysis and reflection. There has been much discus-
sion in the professional literature on the advantages of teachers adopting a
reflective approach to what we do (Schon, 1983; Wallace, 1991; Richards and
Lockhart, 1994). Recently, similar arguments have been made for learners
(e.g. Tudor, 1996; Lynch, 1996; Matsumoto, 1996). One possible objection
to recommending that teachers encourage the reflective route is that it may
benefit analytical learners (Willing, 1988) but be less helpful to those with
other learning styles. However, I would argue that university students are espe-
cially open to an approach to learning on the lines of what has been called
‘experiential research’ (Eck, Legenhausen and Wolff, 1995), since they are
already used to applying data-analytical skills in the work they are doing for
their academic postgraduate courses.
34 Links & Letters 7, 2000 Tony Lynch

4.1. Origins

The materials for ‘exiles’ have been adapted from classroom handouts writ-
ten for our summer pre-sessional English programme. In 1993 we intro-
duced a learning strategies component into the programme, in the form of
a published learner training course (Ellis and Sinclair, 1989). An evaluation
of users’ responses to the component (Stratford, 1993) suggested replacing
the commercial material with dedicated local materials, which we did in
1994, drawing on three main sources of information: SLA and ‘learner train-
ing’ research; teaching methodology books; and our past EAP students. Our
aim was to bring together contributions from relevant parties who do not nor-
mally ‘talk’ to each other: applied linguists (the research literature), teacher
educators (methodological texts), and —not least— non-native users of Eng-
lish in the same situation as our students. In this sense our approach was sim-
ilar to the ‘forum’ metaphor later adopted by Tudor:

Learner training does not… simply involve a one-way flow of information,

in which the teacher provides learners with knowledge and skills they might
not possess… It also caters for the creation of a forum within which the
teacher and learners exchange insights and perceptions of the learning process
and thereby initiate the shared exploration of language learning which lies at
the heart of a learner-centred approach. (Tudor, 1996: 37)

The empirical research literature that we found most relevant to our

materials on the four skills included: for reading, Carrell, Devine and Eskey
(1988) and Anderson (1993); for listening, Brown and Yule (1983a), Kasper
(1984), Lynch (1988b) and Vanderplank (1988); for writing, Kroll (1990),
Shaw (1991) and Mauranen (1993); and for speaking, Busch (1982) Pica
(1994) and Luk (1994).
Among the ELT methodological texts cited in the learners’ materials
were: for reading, McCarthy (1991) and Cook (1989); for listening, Ander-
son and Lynch (1988) and Windeatt (1981); for writing, Hill, Soppesla and
West (1982), and Brookes and Grundy (1990); and for speaking, Bygate
(1987), Kenworthy (1987), and Knight (1992). In some units we also cited
learner strategy and study skills texts, such as Rubin and Thompson (1982),
and Northedge (1990).
For our third source of information and experience, we elicited the help
of students who had attended our ELTT courses; we sent out a letter to
some 100 postgraduates and asked them to tell us about the language learn-
ing techniques they had found useful during their period of academic study
at Edinburgh. In particular, we asked them to describe techniques they had
devised themselves.
These three sources eventually provided the structure for each unit: an
introductory summary of the problem (e.g. listening) and key ideas from
applied linguistic research; a description of practical resources that a learner
Encouraging autonomous learning by advanced-level ESL students Links & Letters 7, 2000 35

might exploit; and suggestions and techniques devised by past students.

These became, respectively, Principles, Resources and Options, the section
headings for each unit and also the first three letters of the title of the mate-
rials: PROFILE – Principles, Resources and Options for the Independent Learn-
er of English. The classroom version of the materials was piloted in 1994 and
has been revised in response to the evaluations by learners and teachers on
pre-sessional courses since then. (For a detailed description of that process,
see Lynch, forthcoming).

4.2. Adapting PROFILE for independent use

The generally enthusiastic user reactions from classroom users of PROFILE
led to a decision to adapt it into a version that could be used by the inde-
pendent learner, not only the high-scoring ‘exiles’, but also students who are
unable to take IALS English courses for other reasons, and those who posi-
tively prefer to study on their own. The main design issue we faced in mod-
ifying the materials was one of accessibility. In the classroom, the teacher is
available to act as mediator or interpreter of the text; for the lone learner we
needed to make the ideas (and language) in PROFILE transparent enough to
be used successfully without teacher intervention. With that in mind we
made three main modifications to the original classroom version. Firstly, we
added Study Notes, which were slightly adapted from notes written for the
teachers using the classroom version. Secondly, we redesigned the tasks that
relied on group discussion, changing them from interactive to reflective, for
the user to respond to in note form and then compare with sample answers
in the Study Notes. Thirdly, we had the materials bound in book form, with
the Study Notes at the back.

4.3. Sample materials

To provide a flavour of PROFILE, I have included (as an Appendix to this
paper) extracts from the Listening unit, which illustrates the tripartite struc-
ture of the material. The Principles section introduces a number of key ideas
about L2 listening, such as the relationship with reading, and the way the
effective listener exploits linguistic and cognitive knowledge sources. The
extract focuses on the importance of contextual information and of flexibil-
ity in listening.
The Resources section discusses ways of using the main electronic media
available to learners in Edinburgh to maximise their listening input: televi-
sion (including closed caption subtitles), videocassettes and audiocassettes. In
the extract you will see that we encourage learners to increase their familiar-
ity with Scottish varieties of spoken English, explaining how local news pro-
grammes can be especially useful for that purpose. It is a common assump-
tion among students at Edinburgh that “the Scottish accent” (sic) is unusually
impenetrable – indeed, some students believe that Scots do not speak Eng-
36 Links & Letters 7, 2000 Tony Lynch

lish properly. We also raise the issue of the very different levels of accessibil-
ity of different television genres.
The Options section in each unit distils the experiences of past students.
In the case of the Listening unit, we report suggestions from ten students and
invite the PROFILE user to analyse the specific characteristics of those sug-
gestions (Task 9), considering what they share and what makes them differ-
ent, and then get the learners to weigh the pros and cons, as in the example
of dictation (Task 10). The final task underlines that language learners look-
ing for ways of improving their English can and should ‘convert’ real-life texts
into learning texts for their own purposes, and that there are various ways of
using the same text as a vehicle for L2 learning.
The Listening sample illustrates three common threads running through
PROFILE. Firstly, the language used is relatively technical and academic,
e.g., target setting, formula and random order. This was intentional; we
wanted the text to reflect the sort of lexical and grammatical features that
the students would be encountering in their course texts. One of the crit-
icisms from classroom learners of other ‘learner training’ materials we had
used on our pre-sessional course was that they were too simple linguistically
and not sufficiently academic (Stratford, 1993). Secondly, it should be
clear from the sample that we are trying to foster a positive overall attitude
to managing the learning problem in hand. Learners who arrive with neg-
ative preconceptions about their likely difficulties in understanding (Scot-
tish) English need to appreciate how much they can help themselves to
cope, for example, by making conscious use of background knowledge and
context to work out a speaker’s message. Thirdly, we aim to make a more
general point, which underlies PROFILE as a whole: that the best place for
collecting relevant and realistic learning materials is ‘out there’ in the real
world.

4.4. User feedback

Informal feedback since 1995 from users of the independent version has
been positive, even from those who would initially have preferred to attend
a conventional IALS course. In 1998 we started to gather data more formally,
in two ways: from a ‘focus group’ (users whose views and responses are sought
as part of the (re)design process) and also from lone users. Our informants
in the focus group were 12 students taking an IALS Speaking class, for which
they were asked to read one unit of PROFILE a week as a home assignment,
to complete an evaluation sheet and then to work through some tasks from
the unit at the class.
Users’ comments often reveal that they have been processing the materi-
als at some depth, which suggests that they find the tasks thought-provok-
ing. Here, for example, is what a Japanese student in the focus group wrote
in response to a question about what he felt he had learnt from the unit on
vocabulary learning:
Encouraging autonomous learning by advanced-level ESL students Links & Letters 7, 2000 37

For a thousand years we Japanese have been learning ancient Chinese poems
by heart - but by using the characters and their meaning, not their sound.
In my case, when I was 13, I went to an English language school where an
old teacher (80 years old) taught us English words using the Oxford Concise
Dictionary. He explained their original meaning, often from Latin. That was
a very old style of teaching.
Nowadays, the situation is changing, but still many Japanese high school
students memorise words in order to pass the university entrance exam, not
to get better communication skills. There are no tests of listening, speaking
or writing. For these reasons Japanese people tend to remember words from
their written form and never from their sound. Using sounds to remember
vocabulary is an important and new technique for me!

The second group we can consult (by e-mail) are the genuine lone users,
whose TEAM scores have barred them from ELTT tuition. We have sought
their views in an open-ended way, asking them to express their opinion of
the relevance and accessibility of PROFILE in their own words, rather than
by circling or ticking pre-selected categories. In adopting this format of
elicitation, we have deliberately sought individual and qualitative respons-
es, as opposed to ‘answers’ that can be tabulated for statistical purposes. Like
Foster (1998), in a different context, we want to preserve the individuality
of each learner’s contribution, which is inevitably lost when data is aggre-
gated in pursuit of statistical robustness. A second, practical reason for not
taking the statistical route is that our number of respondents is still small:
so far we have contacted 16 and have received half-a-dozen replies, which
have been enlightening and interesting. A Thai, for example, told us that he
had initially been put off reading PROFILE by its plain binding and cover.
When he eventually took the time to read it, he told us, he was surprised:
“I found this book was a really good one, easy reading with a lot of ideas
close to my life here”.
One of our main concerns has been whether lone users have difficul-
ties with the book’s language and metalanguage, especially in the Study
Notes, since they were only slightly modified from the original Teacher’s
Notes. So far we have had fewer negative comments on this area than we
expected. A Brazilian wrote, “The Study Notes in every unit are ok for me.
Actually, the ‘teacher-lecture-note style’ helped me a lot to understand
the contents of the book”. (I might add, in passing, that the relatively lack
of open criticism on the part of respondents may be due to any of a range
of factors, such as an individual or cultural predisposition not to criticise,
or to the fact that the medium we chose, e-mail, makes anonymity impos-
sible).
We have some evidence that speaking is the skill about which PROFILE
users are most worried, even after working through the material. Seven of the
12 learners in the focus group said that the Speaking unit needed to be
improved - or rather, extended. They cited as evidence the fact that they still
38 Links & Letters 7, 2000 Tony Lynch

had problems in making themselves understood in seminars. However, we

also hear similar comments from students who have taken conventional
taught classes in speaking; a Japanese featured in an earlier case study (Lynch,
1997) told me that in retrospect he realised it had been easier to talk in the
EAP course than in his academic course seminars. But this is not surprising,
since in a seminar the international students have to understand and com-
pete for speaking turns with native speakers. So the fact that PROFILE has
not provided a complete solution to their problems in speaking is not nec-
essarily a damning criticism. Requests for more practice and more work in
an area in PROFILE may be an expression of unease with the demands of ‘real
operating conditions’ (Johnson, 1996), and not necessarily with the materi-
als per se. This does not mean that we should not look for improvements to
make to the material; we could do more, for example, to guide learners to
analyse and exploit the data they gather, perhaps on the lines suggested - for
teachers - by Tarone and Yule (1989).

5. Discussion

PROFILE is designed to highlight areas in which independent learners can

help themselves improve and to suggest practical techniques that their peers
at Edinburgh have found effective. It encourages them to look for ways of
exploiting the material of their real lives and not just pedagogic materials;
for example, in the Listening unit, the Options section underlines the impor-
tance of exploiting the autodidactic potential of interaction with live native
speakers, and not simply resorting to the conventional technological ‘fix’ of
one-way listening practice (via computer, television or radio) in a self-access
centre.
However, although the thrust of the material is practical, in the sense that
we want learners to try out, to adopt or adapt some of the techniques that
others have found useful, PROFILE also embodies theoretical principles,
which I will touch on briefly in this section.
The first principle is the importance of learner involvement as informants
on the language learning (rather than the teaching) process. Edge and Samu-
da (1981) made a strong case for involving learners in classroom decisions;
Clarke (1989) applied similar arguments in suggesting we should involve
learners as materials writers; and Aston (1996) called for learners to be giv-
en responsibility for developing self-access learning methods. PROFILE takes
that involvement a step further by soliciting the help of past students as
sources of expertise beyond the classroom. This is not in itself new (Rubin and
Thompson, 1982; Sheerin, 1989), but the special value of PROFILE is that
it draws on the experience of peers in the specific local context. The Options
section of each unit offers— and the choice of that verb is deliberate —ideas
that may save newly arrived students time and effort in their learning of
English, ideas from other learners with whom they are likely to identify:
Encouraging autonomous learning by advanced-level ESL students Links & Letters 7, 2000 39

there is no real substitute for practical experience. But neither is there any jus-
tification for not learning from other people’s mistakes or for trying to rein-
vent the wheel, so it makes good sense to reflect on previous experience and
to try to systematize what has been acquired, so that it can be transmitted
and shared in as clear and efficient way as possible. (Riley, 1997: 129)

The second principle is the value of reflection as a tool in language

learning, particularly for adult learners. In PROFILE learner reflection is
incorporated in two ways. First, the suggestions offered under Options are
the result of retrospection by the individuals we consulted in our 1994
questionnaire about their own successful learning techniques. Second,
specific tasks in each unit require the current users of the materials to
reflect on their own experience of learning and using English - sometimes
with reference to events prior to coming to Edinburgh, sometimes imme-
diate reflection on a practical activity they have just completed in the
course of a PROFILE unit. In building retrospection and introspection into
the materials, we support Sinclair’s view that “the most effective learner
development takes place when training combines reflection and experi-
mentation, i.e. thinking about the learning as well as actually doing it”
(Sinclair, 1996: 161).
The third principle is the focus on engagement with authentic mate-
rial – by which I mean the spoken and written discourses that the learn-
ers participate in at Edinburgh. It is our strong belief that students seek-
ing help with understanding academic discourse such as seminars should
be helped to record and exploit those events as data for language learn-
ing. In much of the literature on autonomy (for example, Gardner and
Miller, 1994; Pemberton et al., 1996), it is clear that teachers/counsellors
tend to deal with learners’ perceived problems in understanding spoken
English by referring them to pedagogic packages, usually in a self-access
centre. While it may be convenient for both parties if the learner works
with whatever is available in such a centre, we believe it is more effective
if they are shown how to gather and analyse data from their student lives,
on the lines described by Tarone and Yule (1989) and Clennell (1999).
As in our case, they were able to exploit the fact that their students were
working in ESL settings, the USA and Australia, by creating project-type
activities in which the learners carried out and recorded campus interviews
with academic staff and then analysed the recordings for both content and
form.
These three underpinning assumptions in PROFILE —the value of learner
informants, of reflection and of working on authentic data— require
adjustments to the traditional roles of teacher and learner. Aston (1997:
204), writing about the need to rethink what self-access materials are for,
called for an open-ended approach in which learners would become “method-
ological researchers, exploring resources and evaluating their potential for
learning”; PROFILE is intended to guide the language learner to take on that
40 Links & Letters 7, 2000 Tony Lynch

responsibility for investigation and enquiry, which has parallels with current
notions in the wider applied linguistic field, such as the learner as ethnog-
rapher (Byram and Fleming, 1998).
It should be recalled that one of our aims was to make PROFILE a forum
for communication between researchers, teachers, previous Edinburgh stu-
dents and the current learners. One of the limitations of the independent ver-
sion of the materials is that the predominant ‘voice’ in the Study Notes,
remains that of the teacher. However, the comments we are gathering from
users, such as the Japanese student’s reflection on the emphasis on written
form in vocabulary learning in Japan, should help us to extend the forum.
There are obvious practical constraints on the pace at which one can update
printed materials with the views of recent users, but we hope in the future
to convert PROFILE into electronic form, which would allow contributions
from current users (such as in interactive ‘chat’ sessions), so amplifying the
student voice in the materials.

6. Summary
The independent version of PROFILE was motivated by three main edu-
cation aims: (1) to encourage learners to adopt a proactive approach to lan-
guage learning; (2) to give them access to the experience of researchers,
teachers and fellow language learners; and (3) to persuade them that, as
students in an ESL context, they can exploit the potential of ‘Out There’ as
a rich site for observing and noticing language in use. In re-designing the
material for self-study, we have tried to take advantage of the fact that the
users are already active —even if less active than they would like to be— at
the thick end of the wedge in Littlewood’s model, engaged in authentic
meaningful communication in English. The pedagogic priority is to change
any initial perception that we have driven them into ‘exile’ and that they are
somehow missing out on serious language learning, compared with their
peers in IALS classes, who are lucky enough to have weaker English! Instead
of trying to transform learners into users, as is the convention in learner edu-
cation programmes, PROFILE flows from use, the students’ encounters with
authentic discourse, and offers them options for harnessing those experiences
in order to learn English.

Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the contributions of Sara Stratford, whose eval-
uation of the original ‘learner training’ component of the 1993 pre-session-
al programme led to the decision to write PROFILE, and of my IALS col-
league Kenneth Anderson, with whom I have now worked on several
generations of PROFILE materials.
Encouraging autonomous learning by advanced-level ESL students Links & Letters 7, 2000 41

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Encouraging autonomous learning by advanced-level ESL students Links & Letters 7, 2000 45

Appendix

PROFILE sample: Extracts from Unit 2 – Listening

(Anderson and Lynch, 1996)

Principles

Principle 2: Let context help you

As you are learning English in Britain, you have the advantage of being sur-
rounded by spoken language which, potentially, could be exploited to improve
your skill in listening and also to expand your stock of English. However, par-
ticularly in the early period of a stay in this country, students can get frus-
trated by being unable to understand spoken English. Often this is expressed
in comments such as ‘people here speak too fast’ or ‘the Scots have a strong
accent’. Judgments like those are relative: we think someone talks fast if we
cannot understand them; no accent (of any language) is in itself difficult, but
unfamiliarity makes it seems so.
Especially in the early stages of your stay in Edinburgh, it is important
to set yourself reasonable targets. You should not expect to understand 100
per cent of what is said to you. Remember that native listeners, too, can find
it hard to understand everything that is said around them.

If you observe the behaviour of [a native listener] coming up and joining a

group of other people who are already engaged in a conversation, you will
notice that the new arrival usually waits for a minute or two before begin-
ning to take part in the conversation... Even native listeners, then, may occa-
sionally find it difficult to work out the precise topic, purposes and attitudes
of conversations, even when they have a lot of information about the context
of situation. The native listener will give himself time to work out what is
going on, and will frequently have to work quite hard, making very active
use of his previous experience.
Brown and Yule (1983a:69), emphasis added

So language is not a mathematical formula; speakers may be vague and

unclear in what they say, particularly in social situations. Not only is it not
easy to understand 100 per cent of what we hear, it is also not necessary to
do so.
But one thing you should expect to be able to do in the initial period of
your stay in Britain is to recognise helpful clues in what people say in conver-
46 Links & Letters 7, 2000 Tony Lynch

sation that will enable you to identify the general topic of a conversation, and
then to see if your guess at the topic is confirmed by what you hear subse-
quently. The important thing is to be prepared to change your mind if you find
that what you then hear does not match your first guess at what the topic is.
Flexibility of this sort is an essential skill in listening. Research (e.g.
Kasper, 1984) has shown that we are more tolerant of uncertainty in our own
language. We make an initial guess at what a conversation is about, then lis-
ten for more information to confirm or disconfirm that guess, and change
our interpretation if we need to. In L2 listening we are more likely to keep
to our original guess at the topic of a conversation than L1 listeners, even
when we realise that some later information seems to conflict with it.
Task 4
This task is designed to underline this need to be flexible. On the cassette is
a conversation between two work colleagues, A and B. You will hear the con-
versation in five sections, each consisting of a question from A and the
response from B.
After each answer-and-response section, write under ‘Topic’ (in the box below)
what you think they are talking about and under ‘Reason’ what it is that
makes you think so.
Most people find that at some point in the course of hearing this conversa-
tion they decide that their initial assumption about the topic was wrong, in
the light of the information from a later section.

Stop Topic Reason

point
1

The point of that task can be summarised as the third of our language
learning principles:
Learn to live with uncertainty
Encouraging autonomous learning by advanced-level ESL students Links & Letters 7, 2000 47

Resources

Television
You may specifically want to watch Scottish programmes to get used to the
wide variety of accents in Scotland. In this respect, news programmes can
be very helpful; often the newsreader/presenter has a slighter accent than the
news reporters, and they in turn have a less marked accent than the people
they interview for their report. Seeing each item explained in context in this
way will help you to understand the people being interviewed.
Task 7
There is a wide variety of TV programmes available. Look at the list below
and decide which types of programme you think are (a) most suitable and
(b) least suitable for you to practise listening.
• Scottish news
• political discussion
• children’s programmes
• quiz shows
• international news
• film (movie)
• weather forecast

Options
In this final section we consider techniques that University of Edinburgh stu-
dents have told us they found useful in improving their listening. As you read
them, think about your own situation in Edinburgh. Even if you feel at first
that a particular option would not be appropriate for you, (e.g. if you have
no TV) you may be able to think of ways of adapting the student’s sugges-
tion to suit you. Read the suggestions and then do Tasks 9-11.
Student 1
I noticed that I improved much more when I got a TV but I didn’t take any conscious
steps to practise listening.
Student 2
In lectures they give us lots of notes, especially for the M.Sc. That made it easier and
the subject was very familiar to me, so I could use my knowledge to work out what
the lecturers were saying.
Student 3
Listening to a tape and writing down exactly what you hear is very helpful. To lis-
ten very specifically and in detail means you have to pay attention to sounds which
you have some problems with yourself. Seeing what the gaps are in your dictation tells
you what your listening problems are.

(followed by comments from a further seven students)

48 Links & Letters 7, 2000 Tony Lynch

Task 9
Those ten options have been presented in random order. Can you suggest ways
of grouping them into similar types of listening practice?

Task 10
Student 3 found dictation useful. Can you think of reasons for and against
using dictation to practise listening to English?

Task 11
Think of different ways of listening to a short (5-10 minute) news broadcast.
Discuss them with someone else, or compare them with the Study Notes.

[Readers who would like to see the complete Listening unit, including the
accompanying Study Notes, are welcome to email [email protected]]