LEARNING STRATEGIES AND LEARNING STYLES AS A BASIC RESOURCE TOWARDS AUTONOMY

Learning English as a second language is a process in which both learners and teachers are involved and are responsible for its success. Nowadays there is a tendency to make students more responsible for their own learning. This process is called autonomy, which is seen as a natural product of the learning in which the objectives, progress and evaluation are determined by the learner himself. Students are expected to develop the ability to take charge of every stage of their own learning. Autonomy provides students with opportunities to be active participants in their own learning process.

A term that is closely related to autonomy is learning styles, which refer to personal preferences. Styles are those general characteristics of intellectual functioning (and personality type, as well) that pertain to you as an individual, and that differentiate you from someone else”. All learners have particular attributes relating to their learning process. People learn differently and at different paces because of their biological and psychological differences. This is why student have different learning styles. Skehan (1991: 228) in Brown (2000: 114) suggests that the main learning styles may be Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic.

Another aspect to consider in the process of development of autonomous learners through the use of Self Access materials, is learning strategies. Oxford (1990: 1) argues that strategies are especially important for language learning because they are tools for active, self-directed involvement, which is essential for developing communicative competence.
Oxford (1990: 136) states that metacognitive strategies are actions which go beyond purely cognitive devices, and which provide a way for learners to coordinate their own learning process. They allow learners to control their own cognition or coordinate the learning process by using functions such as centering, arranging, planning, and evaluating.

The current study searches the process that a group of students went through while doing autonomous work in a Self-Access Center (SAC). The study explores aspects such as autonomous work; students’ perceptions about Self Access Center activities; the role of learning styles; the use of learning strategies; and teacher’s and students´ roles during the process. This study reports on the process towards autonomy experienced by a group of students at the Language Center of the University of Veracruz. The teacher trained them to become more independent through practice in the Self-Access Center (SAC) or CAA (Centro de Auto Acceso) and considering aspects such as learning styles and learning strategies, as well as students’ needs, strengths and weaknesses. The study describes students’ perceptions of their process towards autonomy as well as their perceptions of themselves as more independent students and of their teacher’s role. This research was carried out considering Action Research to design a series of tasks for students to guide them in the process of becoming more autonomous. The aim of the study was to explore the process that students went through while doing autonomous work at the CAA and to describe students’ ideas and feelings about autonomy and independent work, SAC activities, problems and solutions, the role of learning styles and the use of metacognitive strategies, students’ roles, and the teacher’s roles.