'Autonomy', desirable for language learning, can be exercised at various levels. At a macro level, autonomy refers to learners' ability and willingness to make decisions and choices about language learning objectives and materials. At a micro level, autonomy involves learners taking responsibility, exploring alternatives and choosing both language patterns and the meaning they want to express during language-learning tasks. In this chapter, I propose 'creativity' as a form of learners exercising autonomy as a communicator at a micro level during language-learning tasks. Exploring alternatives and making creative choices during language learning depends on initial task conditions. Giving learners freedom does not necessarily lead to autonomous creative behaviour. Too much freedom can restrict possibilities for learners to explore and broaden their language repertoire as learners may retrieve safe options and make familiar choices. This chapter discusses how disciplined use of constraints in creative tasks can provide opportunities for learners to act and think creatively and independently, and for their language to grow in complexity.

'Autonomy' as a Universal Human Potential

The term 'autonomy' has been widely discussed and various definitions have been offered. One common definition describes autonomy as the ability and willingness to take charge of one's own learning (e.g. Dickinson, 1995; Littlewood, 1996). Alternatives have included 'taking responsibility for', 'taking control over' one's own learning individually and collectively (e.g. Benson, 2006) and 'making informed choices' about what we want to learn and how we want to learn it (Nunan, 1996).

Various types of autonomy have also been proposed in the literature. For example, Littlewood (1996) proposes three types: ‘autonomy as a communicator’, ‘autonomy as a learner’ and ‘autonomy as a person’. ‘Autonomy as a communicator’ is associated with linguistic creativity – a person’s ability and willingness to use language creatively, to make creative choices with language to express personal meaning in specific situations or tasks. ‘Autonomy as a learner’ refers to the ability and willingness to engage in self-directed learning, making decisions about learning at a more general, macro level.