A Study On The Improvement Of Learnerautonomous Learning Capacity On The Basis Of Theme-based Instruction Model In College English Teaching

I The goal of current education tends more and more to improve one's ability and overall quality. It is impossible for one to adapt to the changing society with the knowledge acquired in classroom. Society is becoming a place where people should learn through their whole life.Over the last two decades, the concept of autonomous learning has become increasingly popular in foreign language education, and the ability to learn independently is considered to be one of the most essential requisites and advantages for every language learner. The College English Curriculum Requirements (of Trial Implementation) published in 2004 places great stress on developing non-English majors'ability of autonomous learning. There is now a common understanding in English teaching that its ultimate aim is to develop students'communicative competence, which requires that students should learn to work collaboratively through the process of language learning and be given more opportunities to engage in tasks in an authentic manner. Their language skills should be developed through the experience of working by using the language for real purposes and to real audiences.People use their communicative competence in society. A language teaching approach is needed to provide learners a context, in which meaningful learning can be achieved and learners'autonomous learning capacity can be developed. Different methods (e.g. task-based language teaching) have been studied and applied to develop students'autonomous learning capacity. The author proposes to apply theme-based instruction model to develop learners'autonomous learning capacity. In a theme-based instruction model the selected topics or themes provide the content for students to learn (Brinton et al, 1989). EFL teachers should design language activities, which are naturally related to the content material. Under such circumstances, students would be more familiar with the content and practice their language using in real situations. Krashen and Terrell (1998) suggest that EFL teachers choose reading texts at an appropriate level of complexity and the topics should be the ones that can hold students'interest to increase their motivation for learning. The theme-based instruction model focuses on cultivating student's responsibility for learning. Therefore, it is supposed to transform dependent students into autonomous learners.In order to find out whether the model is a feasible and effective way to improve learners'autonomous learning capacity, the author carried out a study among 122 students from her college. Questionnaire, interviews and tests are applied to test the effectiveness of the experiment. The result of the analysis shows that theme-based instruction model is an effective model in English teaching and learning. The faster development of students from Experiment Class (EC) in autonomous learning competence proves that theme-based instruction model is an effective way to develop learners'autonomous learning capacity.Based on the investigation, some implications are generated for developing learners'autonomous learning capacity in the following five respects: designing theme-based tasks and activities; helping teachers and learners fulfill role-turn; developing a good environment; providing learners with more materials of appropriate level and combining formative assessment and summative assessment.