DEVELOPING STUDENT RESPONSIBILITY IN THE PROCESS OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
DEVELOPING STUDENT RESPONSIBILITY IN THE PROCESS OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Summary/Abstract: The problem of getting students to be responsible for their own learning is still serious and becoming more so. Undoubtedly, students who are being irresponsible will study with constant reminders or prodding. They won’t seek out challenges and avoid taking on tasks that require greater personal involvement. It will be difficult for them to meet the needs and demands of their future employers, to cooperate with the people with whom they will work. Therefore fostering responsibility becomes of utmost importance in university education included. The present research aims to investigate a degree of student responsibility and foresee all possible means for its advancement. Responsibility for learning is investigated from the students’ perspective in order to discover what they see as relevant or meaningful while acquiring knowledge and mastering (self-monitoring, goal, setting, decision making, conflict-resolution, social, study and team) skills that will be useful for their future career development. A self-adapted questionnaire has been prepared for this purpose. The obtained data revealed a link between the learner independence and responsibility allowing to foresee the implications for the development of student responsibility. Our experience suggests that shift from an educator as the only source of knowledge to students’ advisor, learner independence, sufficient access to modern technologies and information, active (project- based, case-study and team) methods can provide supportive environment for responsibility development. Active teaching methods place the responsibility for learning on the student by encouraging him/her to find the answer to a problem rather than memorizing a teacher – given information. A new learning paradigm changes understanding about studies and their arrangement, promotes a student to develop a responsible attitude towards all the participants of the teaching/learning process.

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