@article{oai:air.repo.nii.ac.jp:00002466,
 author = {グラフストロム, ベン and GRAFSTROM, Ben},
 journal = {秋田大学教養基礎教育研究年報},
 month = {Mar},
 note = {The Conversation Circle (CC) is the ALL Rooms’ longest consistently organized activity offered to Akita
University students. CCs meet twice weekly and are a time for students interested in learning and/or practicing
English to use it as a spoken language, rather than just studying it to pass an exam. Since students may not have
many opportunities to speak English for prolonged periods of time during their day to day routines, CC time is
precious.
　　In the past CCs have been largely unstructured, meaning that many “conversations” were not really
“conversations,” but rather just aimless rambling. When topics were decided and conversations were attempted, they
were largely dictated by the ALL Room’s faculty and/or student staff, and not by the participants coming to practice
English, which hardly made for an autonomous learning environment. Starting in the spring semester of the 2014-
15 academic year, the ALL Rooms faculty responsible for the CC meetings began making the CCs more participantcentered
with the hope of making the CCs more popular and more meaningful for participants. The following
paper describes 1) how ALL Rooms’ faculty and staff began giving CCs more structure to allow for more authentic
“conversation” among participants and 2) how selecting and discussing CC topics has become participant-centered.},
 pages = {23--31},
 title = {Cultivating Learner Autonomy within Groups},
 volume = {17},
 year = {2015}
}