A Journal Study On Factors That Affect College Learners' English Autonomous Learning From The Perspective Of Learners

As a hot topic in the field of Second Language Acquisition, the role of autonomous learning in promoting English learning achievement has been repeatedly confirmed, therefore it has great significance to college English teaching and learning. However, autonomous learning is also affected by other factors, the insights into the factors and their impacts may shed light on helping to improve learners'autonomous learning ability.Designing carefully by the author the research means such as learners'journals, in-depth interview and questionnaire, this study aims to identify the factors that affect learners'autonomous learning and tries to answer the following three questions: (1) What are learners'perceptions of factors that affect Chinese students'English autonomous learning? (2) Among these factors, which factors exert deeper influence on learners according to their own perception? (3) Does the same factor have different effects on different learners?The major instrument employed in the present study is a guided journal and an in-depth interview. The participants are 135 non-English major sophomores from Huazhong University of Science and Technology. The author conducts content analysis (Allison, 2002; McDonough and McDonough, 1997), by counting explicit mentions of improving factors and constraints learners perceived that they encountered and then grouping the mentioned themes into categories. In the process of counting and categorizing, some patterns are more easily recognizable while others are not easily recognizable. Therefore, in order to enhance data interpretation, an in-depth is conducted to get more detailed information on those implicit factors.Through this study, we find, firstly, the influencing autonomous learning factors perceived the learners own are: learning motivation, learning strategy, learners'attitudes, goal setting, self-efficacy, self-attribution, teachers, learning environment, network technology, peers and culture.The study also explores the extent of influence of the factors on learners' autonomous learning through a questionnaire. The result shows that learning motivations, learning strategies, learners'attitude, goal setting, self-efficacy and self-attribution are the most important factors for leaner autonomy. The results also show that teachers, learning environment, network technology, peers and culture play important roles in learners'autonomous learning.After the thorough analysis of learners'journals, the in-depth interview and the questionnaire, the present study explores and discusses the different effects of these factors on learners of different English proficiency.The findings extend evidence on the affecting factors of learner autonomy in Chinese EFL learning context and indicate a clear direction to the fostering of Chinese undergraduates'autonomous English learning.