Abstract：Abstract: In the past ten years or so, social cultural theory and its related discipline, ecological linguistics, began to have an impact on foreign language teaching and research in China. As a core concept in ecology of language learning, affordance has increasingly captured the attention of educators and researchers in foreign language education in China. This article first presents and discusses the definitions, characteristics, classifications and theoretical frameworks of affordance. It then provides a brief review of empirical studies on affordance in foreign language education, which identifies a research trend in recent years - that is, relating affordance to the notions of autonomy, agency and identity in foreign language education. Based on this review and adopting an affordance perspective, this paper revisits and reanalyzes the data originating from a previous study by the first author (Huang, 2011, 2013) focusing on the long-term development of autonomy of a group of BA TEFL students over four years (especially their first year experiences) in a mainland Chinese university. Through reinterpreting the original qualitative data from an affordance perspective, this paper draws a conclusion that bringing the concept of affordance to research on autonomy will broaden our vision on autonomy, and deepen our understanding of autonomy and related notions such as agency and identity. Research in this light will eventually benefit foreign language teaching and research.
Key words: affordance; autonomy; agency; identity; foreign language education
