Promoting Autonomy through Flashcards for University EFL Learners

摘要

This study explored whether flashcards could be used as a tool to improve EFL students' autonomous learning behaviors.Oneclassroom of students used the vocabulary worksheets provided in the textbook for their out-of-class learning while another classroom ofstudents were required to create flashcards to use outside of their classroom.The two classrooms of students received the same instruc-tion on using techniques for their learning.The required components were words,part of speech,and Chinese definition.Any additionalinformation that the students had added without teachers' requirement was defined as autonomous behavior.At the end of the semester,vocabulary worksheets and flashcards were collected for exploring traits of autonomous behavior.Results indicated that the open-endednature of the flashcards facilitates students in testing out a variety of autonomous behaviors,although some techniques were rarely usedand some observed behaviors were not maintained consistently throughout the experiment.