A Study Of College Students' Autonomous Beliefs And Students' Expectations Of Teachers' Roles In Autonomous Language Learning

This thesis, based on literatures, questionnaires and interviews, quantitatively and qualitatively analyzes college students' autonomous beliefs and students' expectations of teachers' roles in autonomous language learning. It probes into the following questions:1) What are characteristics of university students' beliefs about autonomy?2) What are the students' expectations of teachers' roles in autonomous language learning?The thesis first explains some related terms, such as language learning beliefs, learner autonomy, and teachers' roles and so on. And then a survey of this subject is conducted among 121 students from Jiangpu Campus of Nanjing University of Technology through questionnaires and individual interviews. After it a conclusion is made according to the outcome by using SPSS13.0 to analyze related statistics. Finally based on the above conclusion, a vital topic is discussed about the shift of the teachers' roles in autonomous model.The study of language learning beliefs is mainly developed from the three basic aspects of autonomy: the responsibilities of teachers and students, the ability of autonomous learning and the beliefs about the nature of language learning. Through data-analysis and comparison of the results, it comes to the following conclusions:(1) Some students' understanding about their responsibility about autonomy is influenced by teachers' authoritative role in the traditional class; at the same time in the real practice of autonomy, which is the process of goal setting, goal implementing, self-monitoring, self-evaluating, they also call for teachers' guidance, encouragement, monitoring, and cooperation, even the support from schools and other educational institutions;2) Students show weaker confidence in evaluating the following: determining time arrangement of each English class activities, writing English composition precisely, and determining the study content of English class. Their ability of writing should be improved;3) They have had right understanding about the study of grammar, the variability of study method, the mistakes occurring in English studies, the long period for English study and so on. They also have had active beliefs towards diligent study, finding chances to use English by themselves;4) Most students in my survey have realized the importance of information feedback, which is a pleasing result. Most students pay no attention to some aspects which are worth noticing by our teachers, for example, those students in my survey sometimes ignore the cooperation between classmates and the importance ofinformation feedback.With regard to the study of students' expectations of teachers' roles in autonomous language learning it began from the order of teachers' roles made by those selected students. The conclusion reveals that in the model of autonomous learning students show relatively high expectations about the teachers' roles of motivation creators, counselors, trainers, while students show low expectations about the teachers' roles of organizers, supervisors, teaching material developers and writers.