Fostering Learner Autonomy In The College English Reading Teaching

The last twenty years have witnessed the growing attention to learner autonomy and learner autonomy has thus become an unquestionable goal of language education. In 2004, the Ministry of Education of China demanded that colleges should put emphasis on student-centeredness, individualization, and autonomous learning. The paper begins with the exploration of theories in the realm of leaner autonomy in an attempt to discover the theoretical ground for the implementation of a new approach in order to solve some particular problems in English language learning, i.e., the college's fresh students' low reading proficiency,especially after six years'official classroom instruction. The paper proposes that the training program with the framework of metacogonitive strategies in class and learner contract out of class will be effective to foster learner autonomy in the perspective of English reading. In this study, the training program which is designed based on the previous research is experimental in one non- English major class in Youth College of Political Science of Inner Mongolia University for two months. One questionnaire has been used to survey autonomous learning awareness and ability before training. The results show that the students are lack of ways to learn language autonomously .But they take responsibility for their study, and most students are self-confident in learning English. A new way to promote autonomous learning ability should be introduced to them at the moment. So both quantitative and qualitative methods are employed in the study to examine the validity of the data and findings. Pre-test, post-test and face to face interview are conducted to collect both quantitative and qualitative data. All the data collected from the experiment are analyzed by SPSS V11.4 to find out the effectiveness of the training program.The results of data analysis of quantitative and qualitative in this study show that awareness and ability of autonomous learning has been aroused and promoted greatly, meanwhile, the training program with the framework of metacogonitive strategy in class and learner contract after class is helpful to foster and enhance a good habit of reading after class, and learners'reading proficiency.The paper consists of five parts. Part one offers a brief introduction to the significance of this study, basic concept, the aim of the study . Part two is the literature review: literature review of the theoretical background and relative empirical studies. It consists of the concept of learner autonomy, the concept of reading, reading comprehension and theoretical basis of learner autonomy, and then it is the literature review of relative empirical studies. A survey of current college reading teaching in China is also discussed in this part. It consists of the importance of college English reading and the environment of college English reading teaching. Part three demonstrates the study which includes investigation before training and methodology of the study. Part four is results and discussion. Part five is conclusion of this study. It includes major findings and limitations of study.