Students’ voices about English language learning in school and beyond

The research was carried out in a public secondary school in an EFL context with 5^th-grade students (16 to 19 years old). The main goals were to discover what students said about learning English in and beyond the school, and what led them to use English autonomously outside the classroom. A questionnaire was proposed to 122 students to find out the uses of English outside the school. Then, I selected learners who were considered good learners of English by their teachers and who had learnt English only in secondary school and/or autonomously outside school (if that were the case). Based on that criteria, I worked with nine learners using a Facebook survey, two focus groups and learning logs. The idea of good learners of English described by the teachers resembles the concept of the Good Language Learner (GLL) proposed by Norton & Toohey (2001). These authors' concept of GLL focuses on the kind of relationship the learner establishes with the L2 and the external perceptions of what learners do with the L2. For GLL, that relationship signals the difference between English as a Second language (ESL) and English as a Foreign language (EFL) (Gabbiani, 2012; Longcope, 2009). GLLs do not share common personal characteristics that can be generalised; every learner establishes a unique relationship with the L2 and uses varied and changing strategies to deal with it. They do not have the same level of proficiency in the L2, either. What GLL do share is an agentive approach to learning the L2 and a positive appreciation of the cultural artefacts of the C2. Learners mostly accessed these artefacts through ICT that work as affordances (Menezes, 2010, 2011) for both leisure and L2 learning. GLLs suggest that some of the out-of-school uses of English be incorporated into the English class. They argue that if teachers encourage learner autonomy and demand more, they can better serve their L2 learning.