Countless books have been written on what learner autonomy is (and what it is not). Henri Holec introduced the concept to language education over 40 years ago, when he described learner autonomy as “the ability to take charge of one’s own learning” (Holec, 1981, p. 3).

However, taking charge does not tell the full story. The behaviours and attitudes that lead to learner autonomy change over time and with practice. For example, when a pair of students solves a task independently, they each solve it on their own and show the other the results. If they were working interdependently, students would instead be collaborating to share ideas and responsibilities to then reach a solution collectively. When they can rely on each other to complete the task, they can spend more energy discussing and combining their ideas to arrive at the best solutions together.

This shift happens because learner autonomy goes beyond independence. When students are engaged in classroom activities that practice interdependence (Boud, 1988, p. 19; Little et al., 2002, p. 7), they can collaborate with others to reach common goals (Benson, 2001, p. 14).

If we imagine a spectrum ranging from dependence to independence to interdependence, the “‘inter” reflects Boud’s (1988) “more mature form or relationship which places [learners] in the world and interrelating to it rather than being kept apart from it” (p. 19).

When learners take charge of their own language learning, they practice self-coaching. To do this, they need opportunities to learn how to become effective at setting goals, tracking progress, and adjusting their own strategies. Self-coaching students are aware that they can improve their communicative competencies through effective activities. These can include creating a study plan, practicing daily, meeting with a language partner, and adjusting their learning approaches based on feedback and future-oriented and constructive feed forward. 

With interdependence, the benefits of individual self-coaching extend to the whole team so that the partners benefit from collaborative learning and mutual support. With their teams, they role play, share resources, like language apps, games and articles, and listen to each other so that they can correct each others’ mistakes. As they learn to offer and use feed forward, they can discuss and discover learning strategies. With the motivation to practice, the collective knowledge and experiences of the group are integrated into their own insights and skills.

In contrast, when students are not given the opportunity to develop self-coaching skills, they follow the teacher’s instructions, but do not set personal goals or try to solve their problems. Instead, these students simply wait for help because they are dependent learners. When they discover the possibilities for ongoing improvement that can grow through their choices of activities, and their learning can move beyond relying on external guidance.

Teaching self-coaching and collaborative autonomy shifts the focus away from traditional, formal assessments to encourage more meaningful and effective learning experiences. Since we know that self-assessment and peer evaluations are part of the workplace (Boud, 2001, p. 15), it makes sense to include these activities that promote authentic contexts and interdependence in the classroom. 

Collaborative autonomy has also become a growing interest in higher education contexts because of virtual exchanges (VE) and Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) which has the potential to develop students’ intercultural competence (Hackett et al., 2023). Building better behaviours and attitudes for interdependence has become more important than ever. When we reach across the world to connect students and classrooms, we can co-teach through multicultural and blended online activities (American Association of Colleges and Universities, n.d.). Given these benefits and challenges, how can we as teachers help our students develop interdependence and the will to learn from each other?

This was precisely one of the key questions behind the CORALL project, an Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership for Higher Education (2019-1-HU01-KA203-061070). The three-year-long journey of creating Coaching-Oriented Resources for the Autonomous Learning of Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) began in 2019. When we arrived at our project destination, we had created almost 40 tools and resources as well as over ten comprehensive university course modules—all available as open educational resources online. 

The CORALL glossary defines some key concepts, like reflection. A reflecting student actively thinks about their learning experiences so that they can evaluate themselves. Their reflection includes not just the cognitive but also the emotional aspects of learning. Perhaps these students regularly write about their progress and the challenges they encounter as well as the strategies that helped best.  This way, they will become more aware of how they feel about their activities and evaluate the processes they use to reach their goals. This reflection on their past experiences can help students to make appropriate changes to their study, not just the what, how and when, but also the where and why, even with whom!

With the CORALL resources, teachers of LSP can find support in fostering learner autonomy in all its facets, including interdependence, as the following two examples show.