I'm a coordinator of a Self Access Centre in Sebelas Maret University, Solo, Indonesia. I have many duties to make our SAC run well. Many students use SAC for their aims. My question is how can we motivate students to learn by themselves and how can we make them realise that the SAC is good for them to increase their ability?
This question is from Nunung Diyah, Indonesia
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Comments
joe
I'd recommend working on something with the whole academic staff. Introduce 'samplers' into the everyday classes (it's easy to resist the first piece of chocolate, but the second and third?!?!) There are many ways to incorporate little pieces of SAC into the class:
During the first week of their normal course the teacher could have the learners spend 10 mins doing topic-related research on the net in the SAC before returning to class to give a presentation.
Two weeks later, they could be given a task that involves commenting on a book (which would have to be borrowed from the SAC).Two weeks after that, they could do a 'concordancing' task. That is, they are given a word from the top 30 most frequent words. They then find one book, one magazine, one audio script and one web page, and write down 8-15 sentences in which those words occur. The teacher leads them through self-research of the various meanings and collocations those words hold (see 'Materials Development' by Tomlinson for more details).
In any case, the idea is that you and the other academic staff come up with a variety of these 'samplers', and the learners who enjoy it will take it up. And don't worry too much about those learners who still don't show an interest - it might just not be their style.
Barbara Gaston, New Zealand
What we do in our self-access centre is to sit with the students and have what we call an advisory session. This usually takes about 45 minutes.We ask them what their short term goals are and what they want to achieve in the long term. We then suggest a range of resources in the centre that would be suitable for their level to help them achieve their goals. This has buy-in from the students so they start thinking that the achievement of their goals is in their own hands.
Mal James, UK
Here are a few suggestions. Ask the students to keep a learning diary.
Give them a list of useful websites where they can source additional materials.Teach them how to source materials. Show them how to index and evaluate the materials as a group. Keep a log of all the sites and materials and encourage students to comment on them. What was useful? What wasn't?
Mangalaprathaban, India
I feel that a teacher has to be very enthusiastic about what students learn and help them to understand various strategies of learning. It 's easy to do a needs analysis and find out their interests, so a teacher can design better tasks for making them use SAC. It's good to have SAC based on tasks or even learning goals. The teacher has to be a learning counselor in order to monitor the learning strategies and counsel them to solve their learning difficulties.
Riaz Uddin, Pakistan
Self Access Centre may work well only if properly supervised by the teacher concerned. As most students always have query to have them satisfied on certain points. The students may be motivated only if SAC is stuffed with all things / material with proper guidance, in their utmost interests.
Barbara Nicolls, UK
Needs and motivation go hand in hand. If there is no need to learn, no one will search for the tools. As a language tutor, my lessons follow a syllabus based on identified needs of the learners. During the set timetable I am unable to answer all the needs and questions of the learners. Neither can I give the students extra work to do in class. So I use the Virtual Learning Environment which has a language module with all the consolidation exercises which I have created based on the lessons and topics we cover in class. So in your case, I would suggest working together with the people who deliver the subjects and ask them what would be useful to their learners.