Learner Autonomy and Learner Assessment of Teaching. An Appraisal of Learners’ Supposed Capacity of Assessing Their Teacher’s Teaching: Case of the Teaching/Learning of English for Specific Purposes (ESP)
Dr. Codjo Charlemagne Fanou

Abstract
The objective of this article is to appreciate learners’ assessment of their teachers’ teaching. They are generally supposed by teaching institutions to be the best judges of their teachers, and as the main beneficiaries of the latter’s teaching, they are the first people referred to for appreciation. However, students may not appreciate properly their teachers’ teaching especially when they expect more from their teachers than the latter can give them or when they do not know how to learn, do not adopt any appropriate learning strategies, thinking for example that they could behave as passive recipients and thereby expect their teachers to do their best to transmit knowledge, even to non receptive learners. Through my ESP teaching, I have experimented learner autonomy with my students at the Université d’Abomey-Calavi, and most of them have not appreciated my teaching method, expecting me to give them lectures, as they have been used to, although it is widely recognized that the teacher should be a facilitator of learning and not a transmitter of knowledge.

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