IATEFL Learner Autonomy Special Interest Group
A website to share news and resources related to learner autonomy.
Autonomy and the Language Classroom: Opening a can of Worms
How did the project start?
The "Can of Worms" is an ongoing project designed to shed light on various strands of autonomy and language learning, but how did it start?
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"What's with the worms?" by Carol Everhard, LA SIG Coordinator In Issue 37 of ‘Independence’ I wrote a short piece on ‘Autonomy in the Language Classroom: Opening a Can of Worms’. To be honest, it was pretty much a ‘copy and paste’ of an abstract I had submitted a few years back for a ‘moving conference’ on autonomy which was to take place in Hong Kong, as well as Hangzhou province in China. As one who has been ‘seriously involved’ with Autonomy since 1983 and who has not had many opportunities to meet others ‘involved’ in the same field, I was keen to grab this opportunity. As a fan of self-access I was quite desperate to visit HK and see for myself the facilities which till then I had only been able to view on-line. In my youth I had been a keen traveller, but never got further East than the former USSR. Add to that, my reading of The Good Earth and other works by Pearl Buck in my childhood and more recently Jung Chang’s Wild Swans, and you will understand that the prospect of an opportunity to get to visit China was more than alluring! I had my journey all mapped out and my flights provisionally booked, so you can sympathise with my feelings when I received an apologetic note from a member of the committee to say that they had been inundated with applications and regrettably….. With that, I closed up the can and the worms just ‘went underground’! When Jo Mynard and I took over as Acting Coordinators of the LISIG (as it was) in October 2005, I decided to dust down the worms again and see if they could be utilized in some way to trigger some reaction from amongst our membership and beyond. Not being one of the world’s most renowned artists, I was a bit stuck for an illustration to go with my text. Jo came to my rescue with a couple of pictures of cans of worms. Don’t ask me where she found them, but they were just what I needed and they were easy, even for me, to modify!! As the time approached for IATEFL’s 40th International Conference in Harrogate and it was necessary to make some preparations, I had the idea of actually ‘releasing’ some of the worms from the can, but what to do with no can and no worms? This, I thought, would be like ‘Mission Impossible’ and I never imagined it was something that could be resolved with a twenty minute bus-ride from my home to a nearby branch of IKEA, which cost me all of 50 cents!  There, to my surprise, they had long velvety
worm-like creatures in vivid shades of green, blue and red, as well as
black. Of course, I wanted the red ones, but most of them had been used
in their display in the children’s section and the staff refused to cut
them down for me. I must have looked quite ridiculous delving into the
deep cage-like display basket (and almost disappearing head-first
inside) in my frantic search for more red worms and must have seemed an
even more pathetic sight as I trailed round the whole super-giant store
in search of any stray red worms perchance hanging or lolling in other
parts of the store. It was a bit like a treasure-hunt without the
clues. In total, I managed to uncover seven and with all the positive
associations that that number has, it seemed like a good sign. The
other good thing about these worms, which made them so ideal was the
fact that they each had a torch ‘in their head’, which for me was
symbolic. These worms would be used to inspire experts in the field to
‘throw light’ on their particular area of enquiry.All my searching through the store had not been in vain, because at the same time I uncovered something that could be modified to make the perfect ‘can’. It was a collapsible basket with a lid. Some snips of the scissors removed all evidence of the little turtle head and feet and lo and behold when the lid was reversed and lifted, it revealed circles which made it look like the real thing. Perfect! I then saw some black canvas CD cases with zips and handles which would provide light-weight but solid protection for the worms on their journeys and with that my ‘Mission Impossible’ was complete. The cases were also conveniently collapsible. While all of these items to me did not seem particularly heavy, they did add a lot of bulk to my luggage and being one of these people who has always failed miserably at any attempts to ‘travel light’, it meant that a second suitcase was absolutely necessary! Of course, the airline seized the opportunity to claim ‘excess baggage’ and said they were letting me off lightly with only an extra 50 euros to pay! Well, at least my precious worms were still with me and safe, but probably as disappointed as I was that we only got to see Rome ‘in transit’. Our next stop was Heathrow, with an overnight stay in central London where I was grateful to one worm for allowing itself to be used as a convenient door-stop to block out the obtrusive light from the hallway! Then it was off to King’s Cross Station for our journey north. It seemed no time at all till we were changing train in York and soon found ourselves in the welcoming town of Harrogate. Those of you who were there will know that the conference facilities were huge and there was no way that I was able to identify who amongst all those hundreds of people were LASIG members and likewise, SIG members had no way of knowing I was desperate to meet them or of being able to identify me! While the talks which had been chosen by (LASIG Committee Member and former Coordinator) Joan McCormack for our SIG Track on Tuesday 11th April were all extremely popular and well-attended, again I had no way of knowing if the people sitting in the audience were actually members of the LASIG. Admittedly, there were many interesting things going on at the same time as our Open Forum, but there were very nearly more worms than SIG members!! You can imagine their disappointment having travelled so far and long (Made in Vietnam)? Though the members present were few, they were select, and seemed to enjoy the challenge of choosing which problematic area should be assigned to each worm and also deciding who would be most worthy of taking up the challenge of being the ‘Keeper’ of each worm. Read more about the worms |
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