Acase Study On Autonomous English Learning Of Non-english Major Postgraduates

Autonomous learning means that the learners can bear responsibilities for their own learning behavior, are able to make learning plans and learning aims according to their own learning ability, are supposed to choose learning styles appropriate to them and are capable of monitoring their learning process. Only when people learn how to learn can they be said to have got education (Rogers, 1969). Because of the disadvantages of classroom teaching, the students cannot acquire enough knowledge they need, which calls for autonomous learning. And the differences, such as learning styles, between the individual students make it necessary to put autonomous learning into actual practice.During the recent three decades, a great number of researchers and scholars abroad and at home have focused on autonomous English learning from different perspectives since Holec brought it into English teaching and learning in 1981. The foreign researchers mostly paid their attention to its definition, the concept and the factors influencing it while the researchers at home mainly introduced its related theory and concept. And middle or high school students and undergraduates are often chosen as their subjects in empirical studies. But few of them have paid enough attention to the study of autonomous English learning concerning the non-English major postgraduates. Most of the postgraduates are the top students in college. They have specific learning aims and have the ambition to make it. With more enrollments of the postgraduates, teaching in a big class is inevitable and the teachers cannot pay attention to every student, which puts emphasis on autonomous English teaching.This case study intends to measure the overall degree of autonomous English learning of the non-English major postgraduates in Shandong Normal University and tries to find out whether there are statistically significant gender differences with the expectation to put forward some positive suggestions to benefit autonomous English learning. Besides, the question whether there are statistically significant differences between the non-English major postgraduates of group A whose score of CET-6 test is below 425 and group B whose score of CET-6 test is above 425 is also involved. On the basis of the previous studies, the present study adopted quantitative and qualitative methods such as a questionnaire, interviews and classroom observations. The subjects all came from Shandong Normal University and SPSS 17.0 was employed to analyze the collected data. The data comparison includes the descriptive analysis and Independent Sample t-Test.The main findings are summarized as follows: (1) the overall degree of autonomous English learning of group A is not so satisfactory as expected. The gain in the average means of all the questionnaire items is 3.30; (2) gender differences do exist but only exist in a few aspects. For example, female postgraduates perform a bit better in understanding teaching goals and requirements; (3) the differences of autonomous English learning between group A and group B are of statistical significance. The latter group did a lot more outstandingly than the former one in most of the items in the questionnaire. The research results are helpful for the learners to be aware of their real ability of autonomous English learning so as to enhance their autonomous English learning, and provide reasonable suggestions to improve postgraduates'English teaching and learning eventually.And in the light of the above findings, the study brings up some reasonable pedagogical suggestions to foster autonomous English learning in the future: (1) building positive learning beliefs. The beliefs learners hold may either contribute to or impede the development of their foreign language learning. And learners'language learning beliefs exert profound influences on foreign language autonomous learning. It is necessary and urgent to help students correct those erroneous beliefs and those of negative effects so that foreign language teaching can be improved effectively.(2) letting the learners participate in instructional design in order to make them understand English teaching and learning much better and deeper. Participatory instructional design changes instructional design ideas from authoritative decision to democratic decision, from objective-orientation to process-orientation, from focusing on knowledge and scores to focusing on students and their achievements, from designing for students to being designed by students, from the traditional teacher-dominant relationship to an equal relationship. (3) ensuring them language learning strategies training. LLS are those measures taken by language learners to enhance the effectiveness of language learning. The aim of strategy training is to arouse learners'strategy awareness, find out when, where and how to choose the most effective strategy and encourage them to implement strategies consciously and purposely, and at last to make learners control, monitor and evaluate the whole learning process by themselves. (4) focusing more on computer-assisted learning. With CALL, learners can easily gain access to various resources which can arouse learners'interest, inspire their imagination and ultimately result in improvement of their learning. Additionally, CALL environment supports learners with diverse subjects in accordance with their learning styles and personal inclinations.