College English Learner Autonomy Ability To Learn And Research

Ever since the early 1970s, there has been a steady interest in changingthe focus of foreign language teaching from teacher-centeredness tolearner-centeredness. It is generally acknowledged that learners themselvesshould play an active role and take more responsibility in mastering a foreignlanguage to improve learning efficiency. Consequently, learner autonomy (LA)has been a "buzzword" in foreign language teaching.The concept of Learner autonomy was put forward by Holec in the 1980s,and since then a large body of research concerning LA has been carried outin western countries, focusing not only on the rationality of learner autonomyfrom pedagogical and philosophical perspectives, but also on the means offacilitating the development of learner autonomy. In recent years, the studyof LA has also drawn increasing attention from teachers and researchers inChina, but the relevant studies to date in China either stay on the puretheoretical framework, or belong to the definition of the ability of learnerautonomy. So far, there are few studies aimed at investigating the students'autonomous English leaning situation and to evaluate their autonomous Englishlearning competence. With an attempt to fill up such a research gap, this studyaims at examining non-English majors' autonomous English learning competence,to identify students' autonomous English learning problems, and to adoptpossible strategies to improve autonomous English learning competence in thecurrent Chinese context.An empirical study has been conducted for one term. Two classes of thefirst-year students participated in this study. One is an experimental class;the other is a control class. Before the experiment, they were at the sameEnglish level. The same teacher taught these two classes, using the New CollegeEnglish as their textbooks. When teaching the experimental class, the teacherincorporated raising LA awareness, strategies training and task-basedlanguage teaching into the regular text-based teaching, aiming at developinglearner autonomy. On the other hand, when teaching the control group, theteacher just went through textbook unit by unit according to the traditional teacher-centered teaching method.The results of the study show that the academic achievements of the studentsin the experimental class are better than the control class. The students inthe experimental class became more strategic in learning English andstudents' motivation, especially the intrinsic motivation, has been raised.However, the students in the control class have no great changes.These findings lead to the conclusion that the classroom-based approach tofostering learner autonomy is effective. Thus, the teacher can help studentsto foster learner autonomy by awareness raising, strategy training andconstructing an environment that is based on task-based language teaching.The author hopes that this thesis will be helpful for the English teachersin the college in their lesson planning and teaching practice, and providesome perspectives on the innovation of college English teaching in the fieldof fostering learner autonomy.