50 Copyright © 2018, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Chapter 3 DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-3719-9.ch003 ABSTRACT This chapter investigates whether a problem-solving task with an environment exploration component mediates learner autonomy in a 3D virtual world (VW). Two groups of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners were to collect information by exploring the 3D VW and eliciting information from player avatars to complete the task. An analysis of student interaction reveals that only one of the groups acted as autonomous learners by generating new topics based on their observations in the environment; eliciting information and controlling the topics when interacting with the player avatars; and initiating repair leading to input modifcation, negotiation of meaning, and modifcation of output. Results suggest that learner autonomy could be promoted in 3D VWs by improving the clarity of task instructions and by designing learning tasks in such a way that students would be able to complete the tasks only if they share their observations with peers and player avatars. INTRODUCTION Autonomy has been one of the central topics in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research for more than three decades, as evidenced by Benson’s (2016) bibliography on autonomy in language learning, which includes 2,500 references. The concept of autonomy has been broadly explored; though many scholars acknowledge that this concept is “hard to grasp” (Schwienhorst, 2003), they tend to agree that autonomy refers to learners’ ability or capacity to be in charge or to take control of their learning (Cot- terall, 1995; Little, 2007). Autonomous learners are viewed as active agents whose learning depends on their ability and willingness “to make and carry out the choices which govern [their] actions” (Littlewood, 1996, p. 428). Learner autonomy is important for second language pedagogy because it concurs with “our view that language learning requires the active involvement of learners; our attempts to introduce Task-Based Language Learning and Learner Autonomy in 3D Virtual Worlds Iryna Kozlova University of Pennsylvania, USA