The Effect of Career Planning Tools in Developing Learning Autonomy

This article reviews the career planning tools from each of the chapters in the book Taking Charge of Your Career Direction (Lock, 2005) and how these tools relate to developing learning autonomy. The main context of discussion is set in a Japanese university, where Japanese natives major in English and other languages, but the author also discusses how the tools apply to her own career development as an educator. In addition to discussing the usefulness of these tools from an educator’s perspective, the article also makes suggestions on how these tools can be applied to students or anyone who is in a helping position of assisting university students to develop autonomy while navigating through life in university and beyond. Introduction For many people, the purpose of studying languages is to broaden the scope of their career opportunities. The lack of career motives or real-life application of the language can lead to a lack of learning motivation. Therefore, if explicit connection is made between language learning outcomes and the learner’s potential career goal, there is a possibility that learning motivation and autonomy will increase. Anyone, not just young people, can use various career planning tools, at any point in their lives, to gain a deeper understanding of themselves and use that knowledge to refine their life or career goals at that time. Through the understanding of career goals, people can also define their language learning goals more clearly, and subsequently become capable of focusing their attention and energy in achieving those goals. In this critique, I will reflect on selected exercises and career development theories in each chapter of Taking Charge of Your Career Direction by Robert D. Lock (2005), and consider the results in the context of my current position of teaching English proficiency courses at Kanda University of International Studies (KUIS) in Chiba, Japan. Students at KUIS often aspire, from their first year, to build an international career with their academic training. For the most part, this means that the population I work with involve people who have “already decided on a career goal or education major...[but] are uncertain about how suitable this choice is” because they are still developing their career maturity, which is the “ability to make appropriate and informed career