Big brother is helping you: Supporting self-access language learning with a student monitoring system

Self-access and language advising are relatively recent and increasingly common types of language support offered in schools and tertiary institutions around the world. There is a great deal of anecdotal support for the positive contribution of such support to student learning. Self-access and language advising hold strong potential as learner-centred and highly flexible approaches. In addition, there are many sound practical reasons for offering self-access as complementary to or as an alternative to classroom teaching, especially in situations where existing learning needs are too great or diverse to be met by traditional methods. At the same time, there are concerns about the effectiveness (how well they help students learn) and efficiency (how quickly students learn) of these approaches and more research is clearly needed. This article reports how one centre has attempted to take into account some of the challenges reported in previous literature by developing an electronic learning environment that better prepares students for and guides them in their self-directed learning. In addition it reports on the implementation of an extensive monitoring system of student learning, that allows for the provision of more tailored language support than previously possible.