Message to Myself: The effect of keeping a spoken journal on a 1-1 learner’s language awareness and autonomy

By Kirstie Jackson Wilms

Context and Challenge

When I first met S, he was in the interesting and tricky position of having learnt English (to B2 level) independently in an EFL context. Nobody around him either spoke or was learning English, and in consequence, he had largely acquired the language by reading novels. This was successful up to a point, except when he wanted to have a conversation: the slightly formal turns of phrase and the sentence structures he used smacked of literary rather than spoken English.

S wanted, understandably, to feel more comfortable (“less rusted” as he put it) having a proper English conversation beyond the weather and weekend activities.

In addition, as we began working together it became clear that S (due partly to his age and partly I believe to his educational background in France, where the model seemed to be prevalent in schools) held a traditional, “transmission” view of the teacher role in the classroom. Wright (1987:62) defines a ‘transmission teacher’ as one who sees their main tasks as organizing content (‘things to learn’) which are external to the learner and then evaluating learners’ performance with respect to (stringent) standards laid down by the discipline itself. In this model, learners are not understood as sources of knowledge or expertise themselves but rather as vessels to be filled from the outside. As a result, S tended to look to me as the teacher to determine the aims and contents of each session rather than suggesting topics which were of use and interest to him. He also tended to over-monitor speech and was reluctant to self-correct his output post-hoc, preferring to wait for overt correction from my side.

Little (1991:4 in Benson 2011:60, original emphasis) notes that ‘autonomy is a capacity – for detachment, critical reflection, decision-making, and independent action.’ The challenge, as I understood it, was therefore twofold: to afford S more opportunities to speak English outside the classroom, and to foster autonomy in terms of reflecting on his own production and language needs arising from this.

Using learning strategy instruction to encourage such reflection and action with a view to improving language awareness seemed to go part-way towards answering this challenge. In addition, a spoken journal would afford S an extra “safe space” within which to practise as well as providing material for the analysis and self-reflection needed to foster his autonomous capacity.

Action Research Plan

Starting from the question “In what ways do cognitive strategy instruction and keeping a spoken journal lead to increased learner autonomy and spoken language awareness?” I planned a 15-week intervention period.

During this time, S agreed to record at least one spoken journal entry per week in addition to completing any other homework activities.

S was free to choose the topics of the journal entries himself, although on three occasions towards the beginning of the period he responded to prompts I gave. S and I then reflected on the language content of these entries, with a focus on both upgrading emergent language and error correction. Pronunciation was a secondary focus.

Parallel to this, I planned direct (deductive) presentations of key cognitive learning strategies (e.g. practising, analysing, creating structure; Oxford 1990:44), following Nunan (1997a:136) that explicit instruction and awareness-raising activities are necessary for learners to make the step towards deliberate, targeted and coordinated strategy use. I hoped that in making S aware of strategies for e.g. analysing unknown language or comparing L1 and L2 structures, he would become both more aware of his own language use (and notice that of others) as well as better able to self-correct his own output.

Language data for analysis was collected from lesson recordings (with S’s permission) and from the recorded diary entries themselves, triangulated with learner questionnaires on strategy use (adapted from the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning, Oxford 1990:294-296) which were administered pre-intervention, mid-intervention, and at the end of the action research period. Finally, I used observation notes taken from lesson recordings throughout the action research cycle.

Initial Results

A counterintuitive first observation was that S became less accurate in his production, employing more false friends, an example being “the person who is treating ([handle] – L1 [traiter]) my application” [journal, week 11]. However, this may represent a positive change towards ‘successful monitor use’ (Krashen 1981:12). In line with Krashen’s proposition, S might be ‘edit[ing] […] language output where it does not interfere with communication [flow]’ (ibid.) and could be argued to focus more on the message he wanted to transmit than on the means of transmission.

Given that S previously tended to over-monitor, this move towards greater decision-making in communication and exercising of choice as to what to correct or otherwise could be argued to indicate increased autonomy. S may be exercising ‘critical reflection’ (see Little 1991 above) as well as linguistic and communicative decision-making processes. Nevertheless, this apparent decrease in monitoring may simply have indicated S’s increased comfort with the journaling process and with me as interlocutor/ audience.

Secondly, in the mid-course questionnaire, S noted an increase in his searching for parallels between English and his L1. Data from lesson observations and the journal entries supported this. For example, S began to experiment more with language and in searching for L1/L2 equivalents (e.g. journal week 6: “It was a good opportunity … to leave [town] and change my mind… no. It’s not right… well change my ideas…”). Although there was no substantial difference in responses between the mid-course and final questionnaires, such observations may still suggest increased language awareness.

A third observation was that S began to employ a new strategy for dealing with unknown lexis over the course of the intervention, moving from:

“[W]hen I see a word that I do not recognise like this ‘sensate’ word, first I continue […] to see if I can make sense of it in the flow…” [week 2]

to

“I tried to follow not every word that he said, but the general meaning of [what] he was saying and so […] that I could remember what I found the most interesting.” [week 5]

While this reflected a general improvement in comprehension skills, the comment “so that I could remember what I found the most interesting” could be evidence of strengthened (cognitive) summarising strategies as presented in strategy training activities. In addition, S seemed to be exercising more of Little’s critical detachment and analysis to the language in question, suggesting an unfolding of his capacity for autonomy.

S also started to verbalise his learning aims more concretely, going from responding to my suggestions as to topic and mode of enquiry to suggesting a topic (personal introduction and CV) and choosing the mode of assessment (oral presentation) [week 11]. It could therefore be argued that S became more ‘authentically self-directed’ (Benson, 2011:112) in his aims as well as ‘increasingly self-assertive about the kind of proficiency [he] wish[es] to attain’ (Macaro 2008:58-9 in Benson ibid).

Significantly, I believe this represented a move away from the transmission teacher schema within which S had originally operated, towards seeing the teacher in a facilitative role and the learner as a (more) empowered player in the classroom and a source of knowledge in their own right.

Next Steps

Holec (1981:3 in Nunan 1997b:193) lists determining learning objectives and defining learning content as two key aspects in taking charge of one’s own learning.

By the end of the intervention, although S was beginning to make suggestions as to topic, he did not yet analyse his production in terms of knowledge ‘gaps’ but rather from the perspective of error correction.
Furthering the intervention to involve S in modifying or adapting tasks and creating his own learning activities could be an initial step towards S personalising his learning aims.

In addition, support via a reflective framework post-class to encourage learner analysis of the suitability of the activities for achieving learning goals could further cement personalisation.

Building on S’s beginning re-ideation of the learner role in the classroom as that of co-constructor of knowledge, it would be interesting to investigate how far explicit metacognitive strategy instruction (e.g. setting objectives, planning and evaluating learning; Oxford 1990:136) could act to foster his further autonomy.

Conclusion

The use of a spoken journal seems in this context to have been beneficial in encouraging detached self-reflection on language production. When coupled with cognitive strategy instruction this has led to increased language awareness. The potential of the spoken journal for supporting this learner in becoming more autonomous, for example in reflecting on (self- or teacher-designed) tasks is of note. In addition, there is potential to use the spoken journal to foster language awareness with a view to S planning and/or evaluating his own language learning.

Bibliography

Benson, P. (2011). Teaching and researching autonomy [2nd edn.] Abingdon: Routledge
Krashen, S.D. (1981). Second language acquisition and second language learning. Internet edition https://www.academia.edu/download/35238869/second_languge_acquisition_and_learning.pdf (Accessed 4 February 2025.)
Nunan, D. (1997a). ‘Does learner strategy training make a difference?’ Lenguas Modernas 24 pp. 123-142
Nunan, D. (1997b) ‘Designing and adapting materials to encourage learner autonomy’ in Benson, P. and Voller, P. (eds.) Autonomy and independence in language learning. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited. pp. 192-203.
Oxford, R.L. (1990). Language learning strategies: what every teacher should know. Boston, MA: Heinle.
Wright, T. (1987) Roles of teachers & learners. Oxford: OUP.

Author Biography