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of English Language in Indonesia could achieve the targeted role it is endeavoring to accomplish.
3. Metacognition and Learning Autonomy
In general, it could be said that metacognition is the protocol to think about one’s own thinking process. Metacognition has as its components, distinctive from
each other, “metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive strategy” Wenden, 1999. Metacognitive knowledge deals with the information of the thinking process while
metacognitive strategy deals with the skills which are involved to manage, direct, regulate or guide the learning process.
Metacognitive knowledge is not yet unique to one learner. It is not value related Wenden, 1999. What is distinctive from one learner to another is what
experts call learner’s belief. Learner’s belief may take into account learning orientation, models of learning, regulation strategy and processing strategy
Vermunt 1993 as cited in Ajisuksmo, 1996. It is such beliefs which control each learner’s self-regulation in learning. Self-regulation in learning requires a
learner to be first self-directed. A self-directed learner is one who possesses qualities such as ones that Skager 1984 has elaborated. They are self-acceptance,
planfulness, intrinsic motivation, internalized evaluation, openness to experience, flexibility and autonomy.
It could be seen from Rivers’ 2001 and Wenden’s 1999 discussions on self- regulation that after one has been self-directed to continue learning, he or she could
then self-regulate his or her learning. Rivers 2001 argues that Self-regulation involves self-monitor and executive controls. The control of the executive functions,
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which are self-assessment and self-management, is required before one could analyze the task of learning. Wenden 1999 implies that the cycle is continued by
self-monitor only to be followed up by another self-management. It would continue to go this way so that students could reach various levels of autonomy, as
Littlewood 1996 have listed. Related to the main concern of the research, the concept of autonomy should
be clarified. The researcher followed Littlewood 1996 in describing what autonomy involves. It requires on the part of the students knowledge, skills,
motivation and confidence. The first two constitute ability and the others constitute willingness. These concept, ability and willingness, is what Littlewood 1996 refers
to as the ones that would help students to become more autonomous in their communications, learning and personality. In the list Littlewood 1996 puts self-
direction in learning somewhere in the middle of the hierarchical levels of autonomy. Self-direction is, therefore, a stage where a learner starts to choose and shape his or
her own learning contexts. To summarize, self-direction as one of the start to foster autonomous learning
and self-regulation, which keeps up the autonomy, could not be brought up to reality before the knowledge to do so, the metacognitive knowledge is acquired. Therefore,
SELF REGULATION SELF AWARENESS
SELF DIRECTION SELF MONITOR
SELF ASSESSMENT
SELF MANAGEMENT AUTONOMY
Figure 2. 1 Learning Autonomy Continuum
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to bring metacognitive knowledge into awareness, that is self-awareness, would help learners to self-regulate his or her learning. Figure 2.1 describes the continuum of
learning autonomy. One’s autonomy is then fostered by this awareness since metacognitive
knowledge may be brought in and out consciously and unconsciously. However, to have the awareness, learner should bring the metacognitive knowledge to
consciousness. In sum, the idea of figuring out and digging out the metacognitive knowledge into the surface of consciousness in one’s own learning process is the
core idea of metacognition.
B. The Theoretical Framework
This section presents framework adopted and adapted for this research based on theories in the field. Presented in this section are two pairs of interrelated areas of
inquiries which make this research possible and applicable. The first is the relationship between listening journal and self awareness and the other is between
listening journal and its use in classrooms.
1. Listening Journal and Self-awareness
Listening is a real-time, aural receptive skill. In line with School-based Curriculum, listening skill in high school is taught to prepare students to listen to
process information in their future higher study. That means the purpose of teaching listening skill in high school is listening to learn. However, Vandergrift 2004
argues that in order for students to be able to “listen to learn”, they should first learn how to listen. In the framework of autonomous learning, as it has been elaborated,
