THE DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESS OF BECOMING AN AUTONOMOUS LANGUAGE LEARNER IN A PUBLIC UNIVERSITY OF ECUADOR: A GROUNDED THEORY STUDY

This study aims to determine the process of autonomy development in Français Langue Étrangere in a group of college students at a low A1 level . It also aims to help them develop language competence to reach the level A2. This study is based on a pedagogical innovation for which purpose learning journals were employed.
These journals were used to foster students’ reflections about their learning and were regularly submitted and analyzed using grounded theory methods. During the process metacognition and action were discovered as core categories of this theory and the following categories were found as part of the process: describing, start doing, preparing the plan, inducing learning and activating multiple processes. This paper reports the first three categories.
Briefly, it was observed that students empower themselves, taking control of their own learning when they have the opportunity to reflect on it. They put into action their abilities and metacognitive strategies, that allow them to be conscious of their role as foreign language learners and become motivated to search the means to improve their linguistic skills.