Challenges EFL Learners Face in Developing Autonomous Learning: Teachers’ and Learners’ Perspectives.

Abstract

Responsibility is quite possibly the main part of human life character. It is one of the peculiarities of people‟s personalities which denote that individual take care of their own affairs without depending on others. The international trends in education show a paradigm shift from the traditional teacher-oriented approach to a learner cantered approach. This latter has been accelerated by the concept of learner autonomy (LA). In this respect, the aim of this research is to study the encountered challenges that EFL learners face in their process of developing their autonomy. Hence, this research attempts to reveal the sustainable obstacles first year licence (L1) EFL students face in their path to enhance their self-reliance traits in terms of education. The purpose of the current study is to shed light on the pre-mentioned challenges and give learners some tips to avoid these obstacles and boost their learning level. Three main research questions were raised; whether first year EFL learners aware and ready to adapt autonomous learning approach, and what are the types of the challenges they face. For this purpose, two research instruments were used to collect the required information, a students‟ questionnaire and a teachers‟ interview. This study argues for the urge to promote learner utonomy at university level for the positive impact this approach has on EFL learners‟ level of performance, and the findings showed that first year EFL learners are more aware than to be ready for adapting autonomy, and that students have potentials to develop learning responsibility but they do not use them appropriately for their benefits. In addition, teachers share the blame in learners‟ poor level of developing LA.