An Investigation Of Non-english Major Students' Autonomous Learning Ability In A Vocational College

Since the publication of Henri Holec's Autonomy and Foreign Language Learning in 1981, the concept of"learner- centered"has been set up. It is publically accepted that learners should play an active role and be the masters in the process of learning. However, both language learners and teachers from Vocational Colleges in China feel disappointed and puzzled: most learners learn English passively; their motivation for learning English is just to pass a kind of exam; they are incompetent in applying the newly learned knowledge into practice and in implementing learning strategies, much less monitoring the use of learning strategies; they are unwilling to look for any chances to practice English in or out of class.Learner autonomy is the focus of this study and its theoretical basis include humanism, constructivism and cognitive psychology. Humanism puts emphasis on the individual's thoughts, feeling and emotions, and advocates students'own activities rather on the teacher's transmission of knowledge. Constructivism assumes that individuals construct personal meaning from their experience and they build their own understanding of the world through the interaction with the environment. Cognitive psychology regard learning as a process of constant modification and adaptation of learner's mind to the learning environment. So the learners should be encouraged to discover rules by themselves in the process of active involvement.This thesis aims to find ways to enhance students'autonomous ability through examining the learner autonomy and the existing problems of the 175 learners from Jiangxi Industry Polytechnic College. In this study, the main means is the questionnaire survey which includes 7 dimensions: learners'attitudes towards learner autonomy (LA); learners'motivation; identifying what has been taught; formulating appropriate learning objectives and plans; selecting and implementing learning strategies; monitoring the use of learning strategies; monitoring and evaluating learning process. In order to get more in-depth information about students'autonomous problems, open-ended questions are conducted after the questionnaire.The result of investigation indicates that the overall degree of non-English majors'autonomy learning stays at a low level. Most learners are unwilling to have cooperative learning, holding negative attitude, lacking intrinsic motivation, and lacking strategies training. Meanwhile, we can also know that achievement of English learning closely correlates with learner autonomy and female students are doing better than their counterparts.Some tentative suggestions about how to improve non-English majors'learner autonomy are provided: Reconsidering the roles of teachers and learners. In class, teachers should play the role of facilitators, helpers and counselors;Promoting cooperative learning. The benefits of cooperative learning is to provide enough opportunities for students to gain the assistance from teachers and other learners; Arousing learners'awareness of learner autonomy; Training learning strategy. Training learners to use suitable learning strategies are effective ways to foster their autonomy;Creating English autonomous learning environment. Creating a relaxing and supportive autonomous learning atmosphere is particularly important for language teachers.It will be long and complicated to cultivate Vocational College students'English autonomous learning, which worth further researches in this field by English teachers in Vocational Colleges.