Abstract

Autonomy is a phenomenon that speculated many scholars and readers. It is a broad term found in many disciplines because it has a number of potential benefits. It is defined by Henric Holec (1981, p.3) as a capacity or a fundamentally critical process to reflect on one's own experience and "to take charge in one's own learning". This paper investigated the promotion of autonomy through the use of response journals. The aspects of autonomy were examined generally in this study. Language teaching was approached through the task-based instruction. Students were asked to write a response journal as the task to language learning. The response journal was written before explaining the lesson in class to ensure students’ responses to the lesson were original and not blurred by the teacher’s explanation. The subjects were senior female English students in King Saud University. The subjects were given explicit instructions regarding the format and content of the journal. Then, an analysis of the first journals and fifteenth journals took place in terms of self-reflection, self-recognition, and other aspects of autonomy. The choices of the journals were taken randomly, just to track the progress in the subjects. Therefore, the effectiveness of the use of response journal to foster autonomy in language learners was the main concern of this paper. The analysis showed that learners throughout the process of writing journals used more of the mental verbs, personal pronouns, and attitudinal lexis. These three features can denote students' selfawareness, self- recognition, and self- reflection. As such, this study has found that the use of response journal is an effective method in fostering their autonomy. It provides students with a context to learn, reflect, and evaluate, hence, promoting learners' autonomy.