In this project I would like to prove that autonomous learning is extremely beneficial for language learners. It prepares students for easier step into adulthood. The concept of allowing students to plan and negotiate the content of the lessons makes them more interesting for the students and it is a significant factor which influence the increase of students’ motivation. I would also like to show that it is possible to have interesting lessons without too many materials prepared by the teacher and we ought to learn to take advantage of what the learners can create themselves. In order to develop students’ speaking skills my aim is to guarantee each individual the chance to speak in every of the three lesson but in slightly different communicative situations. I wish everybody would speak in a relatively stress-free environment.

The group that I have decided to conduct my diploma project lessons with consists of students eager to learn English. It is their fifth year of studying English in an environment supporting the development of autonomy so they are used to the conditions that I would expose them to during my lessons. During their classes they are exposed to a lot of spoken English because their teacher following the modern syllabus considers speaking as the skill that should be best developed. In modern methodology the focus is on communication and this is the factor that pushed me into deciding to concentrate my attention on developing speaking skills and providing situations likely to encourage genuine communication among the students.

As far as the course-book used with this group is concerned, it is carefully chosen as it integrates all the four skills and introduces elements of cross-cultural studies. However, it is not used regularly during every single lesson. It is worth noting down that this course-book supports autonomous language learning, being designed in such a way that students can use it without a teacher’s help.

The syllabus for the group is designed at the beginning of each term and the content is chosen together with the learners. Apart from the core material that is obligatory to be dealt with, students themselves negotiate and choose the content of it. The lessons are far from being similar to the traditional ones because they are original and sometimes unconventional. Not only do the students learn the target language but also those lessons help them to learn how to live and students have the opportunity to get to know the surrounding world better. The teacher is very flexible and when she sees students’ need to discuss particular topic she reacts immediately and organises lessons which aim at clarifying the subject or developing students’ awareness of it. When I was planning my lessons I had to take the syllabus for this group into consideration. I have decided to devote my lessons to practising speaking because in the syllabus a thematic cycle was planned. The students’ interest was very helpful for me in the choice of the topic of the lessons. As a group that likes creative work I decided to make use either of drama or of project work. Both forms of work are well known to the students so I assume that there should be no problems connected with the topic and with carrying the lessons out. High level of the students’ proficiency allows for realisation of my aims.

In this project I am going to conduct three lessons where one is the continuation of the other. The first one is the most important for me because only after this lesson will I know the content of the next remaining two lessons. During all those lessons each member of the class will be invited to express her opinion in the forum and privately in smaller groups.

Therefore, on the first lesson there will be a debate and the students’ task will be to choose from two options the form of work that they consider more valuable and more interesting for them. In this way they will be provided context to negotiate the content of the next lessons because their choice will determine them. After the debate the students will evaluate themselves and reflect on the lesson itself as well as on their performances. The reason for that is to develop in the students’ self-awareness and self-evaluation skill.

During the second lesson the students will be dealing with realisation of the negotiated content. They will work in groups and they will do their practical task in order to present it during the next lesson.

Ultimately, during the third lesson, the students are supposed to present the final ‘product’ of the two previous lessons. Evaluation of this lesson will show students’ ability to analyse the process of realisation of the plans from the first lesson. The questionnaire, which the students will deal with, will provide me with information about the students’ awareness of the teaching and learning process and it will certainly be valuable help for me in my future teaching experience.

I hope that my lessons will be beneficial for the students in developing their fluency while speaking and I think that the fact of being autonomous learners will help them in achieving the aim.

Evaluating the lesson I must admit that even though all the stages were conducted and main aims were achieved I am not fully satisfied. Although everything that I had planned went according to the plan my satisfaction is only partial and my expectations were not completely fulfilled.

Before the lesson the students were informed about the topic and they had to divide themselves into groups (Drama-4 students, Project Work-4 students, the Speaker, Audience-the rest of the class) and prepare themselves in order to be able to take active part in the debate. Letting the students create groups according to their wishes led to better group cohesion and co-operation because it is obvious that people, in general, work more effectively when they have friends around.

In fact the students had prepared their arguments at homes but during the debate it looked as if students hadn’t been listening to one another because many arguments were repeated and, in my opinion, at some point the debate became boring. In spite of that fact, the aim which was to let the students negotiate the lesson content was achieved as they finally decided that they prefer drama to project work. No matter what arguments they were giving, the most important aspect is that they were using English to communicate and exchange information.

The debate, which was conducted by the Speaker, provided opportunities to develop autonomy because the responsibility for the flow of it was shifted from the teacher to the learners.

While the students were discussing advantages and disadvantages of the two work forms the teacher was noting down group members’ participation and mistakes in order not to interrupt while speaking and to be able to assess the students later. I decided not to pay attention to every single mistake that occurred but just to those more significant which determine the meaning of the utterance. The point is that the focus while free speaking is on fluency rather than accuracy. Not to discourage the students I decided to use self- and peer-correction and that was a valid decision. At the beginning the students didn’t like the idea of referring back to their mistakes but as a result they had no problems with correcting them and providing the right forms.

As the first four stages took more time than I had planned at first I thought of omitting error correction for the sake of next stages, but when it came to reflections and feelings some students mentioned the problem of mistakes and I considered it necessary to respond to the comment.

As far as the evaluation of each participant is concerned, I must admit that I am pleased with the results. Assessing themselves the learners were very objective and critical. They suggested neither higher nor lower number of credits for particular individuals because of liking or disliking somebody. Even though they seem not to like self-assessment they have developed the skill quite well. They can pinpoint weaknesses and good points of both the whole lesson and their participation. This can be noticed reading their diary notes. This is also a chance for shy learners who are not yet confident speakers to express themselves.

It wasn’t until the debate finished when I announced that drama the students had chosen to be the better form of work was the basis of the following class. Up to that stage they had been negotiating the lesson content not even being aware of that but they liked the idea of drama making very much and from that moment started participating more actively and with greater pleasure.

As I was planning the lesson I assumed that at the discussion stage, when the students have already chosen what they would do during our next meeting, it would be more interesting to choose one topic for all the groups because in that way we could see the differences in interpreting and presenting the same topic by different students. At that particular point of the lesson I had to decide whether to follow my plan or to change it for my students’ needs who proposed choosing different topics for different groups. At first I felt a bit awkward and confused but as the aim was to let them negotiate the content of the lesson I decided to change my assumption and in consequence we agreed for three topics for five groups. What pushed me to change the decision was the fact of motivation. From my own experience as a learner I know that students are more motivated if they do the task that is connected with their interest.

The lesson itself was an effective one to help the students develop the skill of consensus-reaching. The atmosphere that the students created helped in developing that particular skill. They were friendly towards one another. During a debate lesson excitement among the students is easily seen. The groups tried to be very convincing so as to win in the voting but they didn’t treat it too seriously and there was no element of unhealthy competition.

As a logical continuation of the previous lesson this time the students were realising the negotiated lesson content which was connected with drama making.

When the students were preparing themselves to the task I asked them to prepare “project posters” (action plans), which was very useful but at the same time more difficult for the students than I had expected. At the beginning they felt puzzled because they didn’t understand me correctly and it led to confusion especially as the part ‘division of work’ is concerned. There the students were supposed to decide who would do what but although I explained what information should be included the learners still had problems. In spite of the misunderstanding I believe that the idea of project poster was valid for the students and the teacher. In an autonomous learning careful planning of your work is of great importance and this particular task provided opportunity to practise it. It was also beneficial for me as a teacher because it gave me overview of the students’ work.

During that whole class the students’ responsibility for the lesson was extremely high. For most of the time they were working on inventing their sketches that would be presented in two days’ time. During such lessons where students do a particular task in groups or individually teacher’s supervision and constant monitoring are of great importance. The ability to keep an eye on and to scan the group let me avoid any discipline problems. Because noise in group-work is unavoidable the idea of making one student responsible for chaos and noise level in the classroom was appropriate. In this case another element of the students’ independence was introduced. In this way I helped them to become less dependable on the teacher and more self-disciplined. Apart from that, it is scientifically proved that teenagers prefer listening to their peers rather than adults and thanks to that the noise level was acceptable.

Monitoring the groups while working I noticed that they were highly involved in doing the practical task and observing their faces and listening to their comments I must say that they enjoyed being in the class and doing the task. It enabled to show their creativity and imagination. What is more, the motivation was high and it affected working. It was the awareness of being assessed that raised the motivation level. The contact between the students and the skill of co-operative working were developed. There is one more thing worth mentioning. I also observed that letting weaker students together doesn’t mean that their final product will be worse. Maybe in terms of the language it can be of lower quality but when it comes to inventiveness it doesn’t differ and sometimes we can even be surprised with the results.

All in all I would like to say that I liked the lesson. The students could develop speaking skill. Unfortunately the students tended to use Polish. When asked after the lesson for the reason, the students told me that it was caused by the will to be perfect in terms of language and creativity.

Looking back at the cycle of those three lessons I freely admit that the last lesson was the most successful one in terms of achieving aims and in the form of the lesson itself. If it hadn’t been for one group being totally unprepared with their ‘final ‘product’ of those lessons, I could have told that everything had gone according to the plan.

First of all, talking to the students just before the lesson started I saw how serious their approach to the task was. The excitement, curiosity and at the same time fear of performance was easily discernible.

Because the students knew that their dramas would be assessed I didn’t need to encourage anybody to observe the performances carefully. What I liked about the dramas was the fact that every student from the group took part in the performance and the participation was rather equal.

As in the previous stage speaking and listening skills could be developed equally, at that moment listening skill was superordinate. Thanks to all the presentations the lesson was more interesting and a lot of fun and humour were introduced into the classroom. Such atmosphere facilitates teaching and learning processes so teachers should seek for this kind of supportive learning environment.

Seeing the students’ involvement I thought that particular activity could work even better if the learners had specific audience in mind, for example their parents, other teachers or learners from the school.

Referring back to the last but one stage I have to admit that it gave the students a lot of practice in free speaking. Evaluating the dramas and assigning credits we were discussing many aspects and the learners achieved an agreement in the choice of the best drama in terms of language correctness and inventiveness.

1. I managed to provide many situations and tasks which enabled the students to use the target language to communicate and it led to their having opportunities to develop speaking skill and fluency.

2. Thanks to the fact that these were the students who decided on the content of the lessons the motivation level was increased to the maximum and this factor affected the atmosphere in the classroom.

3. I noticed that students enjoyed working with groups as they felt more confident and at the same time comfortable. It convinced me that they felt more secure. They were more open and could show their creativity easily concentrating on their tasks. What is more, it was appropriate for developing co-operative working.

4. The situations when the students had to negotiate and discuss any topic gave them a chance to develop the skill of consensus-reaching.

5. I learned that being flexible and not sticking to the plan directly is very helpful in establishing rapport and it also promotes developing students’ autonomy. Teachers should be open to students’ suggestions and needs because it facilitates learning and teaching processes and affects motivation, interest and involvement in the lesson as well.

6. I found out that the idea of letting the students work in groups according to their wishes is more valuable than mixing weaker students (in terms of language abilities and proficiency) with those better ones as they feel more confident working with friends. Their work may be on a lower level of English but for sure it will not be worse in terms of idea or creativity.