Open Access

Ernst Apeltauer

• Learner autonomy has been discussed since the 70th in the last century. It was argued, that learners should be familiar with foreign language learning, because language learning will get more and more important in a society of the future. So even after school time people should be able to develop foreign language skills without any formal teaching. In recent time a new concept has been added: teacher autonomy. Learner autonomy and teacher autonomy are interdependent. In other words: We can not develop learner autonomy without developing teacher autonomy. Our discussion starts with some simple facts. Gordon Wells observed in his famous Bristol Project several children for more than ten years and compared their language development and learning behaviour in two contexts: school and families. Interesting differences have been found. On the one hand children are more initiative and more curious in the family context. On the other hand they loose more and more initiatives through school experiences. The concepts of learner autonomy and teacher autonomy and consequences for teacher training will be discussed in the context of these findings.