Learners' Readiness for Self-Direction and Views on Selecting the Learning Contents in Autonomous Classroom Settings

Self-directed learning is a language learning context where individuals are encouraged to take full responsibility for their own learning and it is also a desirable goal for both parties that is the teacher and the learner. This paper aims to investigate learners? readiness for autonomy and their views on selecting their language learning contents at the university level in English language lessons. The participants were 52 fresh men who are studying at a foundation university in Istanbul, Turkey in 2019-2020 academic year. In this study, the data were gathered through a Likert type Learner Autonomy Questionnaire which was developed by Egel (2003). Descriptive analysis was used to analyze the data. The results showed that the participants have plans to continue learning English independently without their teacher after their formal education is over. It also became clear that learners consciously connect the previously learned knowledge to the new ones. Finally, we found out that while the learners prefer to choose their study materials, they seem to hesitate in determining the subject to be learned.