"Agency" as a language learning goal

The concept of agency as a language-learning goal mentioned in an article I read for my summer class at Indiana University (Warschauer, 2004) was new to me, and I did some further research on it to get a better grasp of the concept. According to the articles I read (sources noted below), although there are different ideas on the exact meaning of agency, it seems that they all relate to the idea and value of language learners having the power to be self-directed learners that can use language in a meaningful way instead of vessels passively awaiting instruction from the teacher. This article adds the idea of having students create something that can be shared with an international audience, which I think is a really interesting idea.

In my Mandarin classes, I try to give students the opportunity to create with the language, including video projects, role-plays, and presentations (e.g. a travel diary to a fictional country, describing a robot that they saw at a technology expo, and talking about a brief timeline of their lives). I think giving students opportunities to discover and explore with language are important towards promoting extended use of the language after graduation and throughout their lives.

I like the idea of students creating a multimedia document to be shared online (as mentioned in the article), but I haven’t yet implemented this in my class. While I think it’s a good idea, I think that it’s important that there can be some assurance that students would receive some feedback from the “international audience,” instead of sharing it somewhere in a remote part of cyberspace with no viewers.

Supplemental Sources Used:

Duff, P. (2012). Identity, agency, and SLA (Links to an external site.). In A. Mackey & S. Gass (Eds.), Handbook of second language acquisition. (pp. 410-426) London: Routledge. (invited)

 Miller, Elisabeth R. “Agency, language learning and multilingual spaces.” Multilingual. 2012, Vol. 31 Issue 4, p441-468. 28p. 1 Chart. DOI: 10.1515/multi-2012-0020. ,

 Xiao, Junhong. “Learner agency in language learning: the story of a distance learner of EFL in China” Department of Foreign Languages, Shantou Radio and Television University, Shantou, P.R. Distance Education, 2014
Vol. 35, No. 1, 4–17, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2014.891429