The Effect of Autonomous Learning on Language Proficiency and Use of Language Learning Strategies for the Moroccan Baccalaureate Learners

Abstract

Autonomous Learning (AL) as a teaching concept has been widely approved of as a highly sophisticated promoter of efficient language teaching and learning. It is a pedagogical philosophy that is believed to enhance the quality of lifelong learning by accentuating the learner’s presence as an active partcipant in the teaching-learning operation. In fact, developing effective autonomy-enhancing methodologies and devising appropriate and practical activities that may nurture the sense of learning responsibility and promote the teacher’s classroom presence as assistant and guide has attracted considerable attention in the realm of applied linguistics ever since the early 1960’s. In the same vein, this paper aims to tackle the issue of AL in the Moroccan secondary school environment and how incorporating it into the classroom can increase Baccalaureate graders’ language proficiency (LP) and their use of language learning strategies (LLS). Two groups (control and experimental) of twenty students each were involved in a one- year- long experiment to demostrate how training learners to become autonomous, through the systematic use of the learner development program (LDP) that was devised by Sharles and Zsabo (2000), would advance their LP and their ability to effectively use LLS. The results show that the level of LP and use of LLS can improve when teachers engage their learners in autonomy-enhancing activities in a consistent and systematic manner.