Word Association

The generation of original ideas to communicate in the L2 often appears to be a difficulty for learners who are attempting to engage in meaningful discussions.The design of the English Discussion Class (EDC) offers opportunities for learners to be exposed to ideas and use them in the discussion, but some learners still have not seized the opportunity to use ideas from the homework reading and pre-discussion activities in the general discussions.This article describes an activity based upon the principle of learner autonomy that uses the psychoanalytical technique of word association, in conjunction with the maxim of learner involvement and principle of schema activation, to attempt to stimulate learners' ideas relevant to the discussion topics and related to the learners' own life experiences. LITERATURE REVIEWThe central teaching principle which will be the focus of my activity is Learner Autonomy.According to Brown (2007) the Principle of Autonomy is described as follows: "Successful mastery of a foreign language will depend to a great extent on learners' autonomous ability both to take initiative in the classroom and to continue their journey to success beyond the classroom and the teacher" (pp.7071.This is the central principle due to the fact that the design of the English Discussion Class (EDC) requires students to generate content on their own in order to communicate ideas about a specific topic in the discussions.In my view this necessitates a degree of learner autonomy and so my activity intends to use this principle as a foundation.Additionally, Brown (2007) said that learner autonomy includes a capability for the learner to control one's own learning and this is the theory behind shifting the focus from a teacher-led methodology to a procedure that puts more of an onus on the learners to be creative and productive in the target language.Scholars have attempted to identify what learner autonomy actually is when considered in the educational domain.Benson (as cited in Schmenk, 2005) has posited three versions of learner autonomy, namely technical, psychological, and political.For the purposes of my activity's theoretical foundation, I have chosen to apply the psychological version which Benson (as cited in Brown, 2007) defined thusly, "a capacity-a construct of attitudes and abilities-which allows learners to take more responsibility for their own learning" (p.70).Therefore, this "capacity" that learners have to use their world knowledge in conjunction with their limited English speaking ability will coordinate their attitude or outlook on concepts and thereby generate output appropriate to the topic they will discuss.Furthermore, I thought it necessary to locate literature on applications of this principle and its reported success or failure.One such method based on this principle is self-directed language learning (SDLL).Wenden (2002) observed that "Early proponents of SDLL were explicit that learner autonomy, generally defined as the ability to take charge of one's learning, was their basic educational goal, with self-directed learning being seen as the realization of a learner's potential for autonomy" (p.36).Essentially, SDLL requires that learners, among other things, plan their learning which is believed to promote learner autonomy (Wenden, 2002).However, even though I am not using SDLL as a method to realize learner's autonomy, I am using the concept in a way that can make the learner more responsible for generating ideas or content to develop further in the discussion preparations.In this manner, I think that I am