Action research by language teachers at a New Zealand polytechnic aims at promoting collaborative autonomous language learning among students who learn Māori and those who learn Japanese language. This presentation will report preliminary findings focusing on the learners of Japanese who engaged in group projects using Web 2.0 technology (wikis).
Four educators in New Zealand who are enabling learning of four different languages collaborated to write a book chapter (Tukua et al., 2020). These teachers reflected on their own current practical implementations of autonomous learning (AL) and came to identify future development needs in order to enable efficient AL. This resulted in action research by the Māori and Japanese teachers. In this action research, L2 learners of Japanese and those of Māori engaged in group projects requiring collaboration to create wikis (Japanese) and to write a transcript of a speech on OneNote (Māori). The objective is to investigate (1) how L2 learners of these languages demonstrate collaborative autonomous language learning, and (2) how they perceive this collaborative work. Data from multiple sources were collected: students' wikis and OneNote work, comments and iterations, survey, and interviews. This presentation focuses on preliminary findings from wikis that the students of Japanese created and explores types of contributions and behaviour demonstrated by them. The findings indicate that most students autonomously tried to improve their own writing to varying degrees whereas no students made corrections or gave feedback to others in terms of form.
Tukua, C., de Burgh-Hirabe, R., Kim, M., & Dofs, K. (2020). Preparing them: Autonomous learning and teaching experiences by four language educators in New Zealand. In C. Ludwig, M. G. Tassinari & J Mynard (Eds.), Navigating foreign language learner autonomy (pp. 131-147). Candlin & Mynard ePublishiing.
