College English Classroom Self-regulated Learning Fostering

Classroom is the main place where learners of English as foreign language go about their language learning. Teachers' behavior - verbal or nonverbal -acts as external conditions for language learning. It plays an important part in yielding favorable cognitive and affective environments for learners to engage in, which is conductive to activate their internal mechanism. The studies of L2 classroom that grew unprecedented in 1980s lay particular stress on language acquisition side of classroom and the effect of teacher input on students' acquisition, but neglect the effect on students' learning attitudes and ability. In view of this shortcoming, the purpose of the present study will be to explore the pedagogical side of language classroom teacher talk in the light of theory of self-regulation and theory of social constructivism. That is, to investigate the English teacher classroom behavior and its effect on learners' self-regulated learning development.The present study describes characteristics of English teachers' classroom talk that may impact students' self-regulated learning development, in terms of four areas, namely, empowerment, instruction of learning strategy, enhancement of positive affect and scaffolding.By using classroom observation, the study yields the following findings:Generally speaking, the environment created by teachers is not very supportive in terms of fostering the self-regulated learning attitudes and ability. Some features of classroom teacher talk do facilitate self-regulation and appear frequently while others appear seldom or do not appear at all.Specifically speaking, Teachers attach great importance to scaffolding. Teachers pay little attention to involving students in the whole learning process. They do not empower learners to set learning goals for themselves, monitor or assess their learning behavior. They give learners some instruction of learning strategy but this kind of instruction is not very sufficient. Seldom do they arouse learners' interest in the learning, nor do they often give approval, encouragement to learners' performance.The results of the present study, on the one hand, can illuminate pedagogy, namely, that teachers are expected to create optimum environments through optimizing their classroom behavior and facilitate students' learning attitudes and ability in order to help them become autonomous and active learners. And on the other hand, they are able to prove that the classroom is a productive place for the investigation of learners' self-regulated learning training.