A Study On Promoting College Students' Autonomous Learning From The Perspective Of Learning Style

With the globalization of world economy and China's entry into WTO, a good mastery of English means a lot more to the English learners. With it, they are able to complete their higher education and get a degree with which they can find a good job. It also provides advantages for their future development. Under this condition, more and more people join the trend of learning English. Parents send their kids to study English at an earlier and earlier age. Adults invest more and more time into the learning of it. It can not be denied that English teaching and learning in China has rapidly progressed in the past few decades. However, time and efforts the learners put into learning, are usually not in proportion to their learning outcomes. For a long time, teachers' dominance and control in classroom are the features of ESL/EFL and students only passively accept what teachers say and do what teachers tell them to. That is to say, teachers play a dominant role in transmitting knowledge to learners and teachers' talk occupies most of the time in a class with learners sitting there listening and taking notes with few or no chances to communicate with each other or with the teacher in English. This teaching pattern directly results in high scores in some examinations for better, but for worse, low communicative abilities in practice. With the development of Applied Linguistics, the traditional relationship between teacher and students has been criticized by more and more language teachers and researchers. In ESL/EFL field, there is a tendency that students are supposed to take more responsibilities in the process of language learning. So the concept of learner autonomy has received more and more attention in the field of second and foreign language learning. In order to find the most effective way for the students to study English, since 1960s, the focus of ESL/EFL research has been shifted from the teaching process to the learning process. In this process, many language researchers come to realize that no matter how sound their teaching methods may have appeared in theory, the students have often failed to produce effective learning outcomes the teachers have expected. They attach great importance to the individual learners' differences and the influences of these differences on language learning. Thus, learning style, one of the variables, has attracted more and more attention of language teachers and researchers. In western countries, the research on learning style began early in 1970s and a number of studies have been carried out and a series of encouraging results have been obtained. In China, teachers and researchers have used the relevant theory and research findings for their own study, which is helpful for promoting English learning and teaching in China. However, most of the research is about theoretical illustrations of the important roles of learning style in English learning and some empirical studies have been conducted to seek the possible relationship between English learning style and English achievements. The focus of this thesis is to promote teachers' and students' concept of autonomous learning and learning styles, find the relationship between learning style and the achievements and promote students' autonomous learning from the perspective of learning style.The subjects involved in the survey are 185 English majors from Chongqing Normal University. The author uses questionnaire to investigate learners' preferred learning styles, the relationship between learning style, autonomous learning and English achievements. That is, the first aim of the thesis is to explore students' preferred learning styles. The second aim is to probe into the correlations between students' learning styles and their autonomous learning achievements. The third aim is to foster and improve students' autonomous learning from the perspective of learning style. Through the empirical study, it was found that most students prefer visual learning and that the awareness of learning style can promote students' autonomous learning. It is believed that the results of the study can provide insights for the people involved in this field. On the basis of the findings, recommendations are given: teachers should first upgrade their own knowledge of learning style and autonomous learning and arouse students' awareness of their own learning style preferences and its effect on autonomous learning; teachers should take students' learning style preferences into consideration when planning the teaching activities and help them consciously diversify their learning styles; teachers should help students be aware of their own learning style preferences in choosing their learning strategies in the process of autonomous learning thus improve students' learning efficiency; the study may also shed some light on the educators when they design the educational curriculum.