A Survey Of Uygur Students' Beliefs About English Autonomous Learning

As the target of modern education, autonomous learning has received extensiveconcern in the field of foreign language teaching and research. As the old saying goes:it is better to teach a person how to fish rather than give him a fish. Modern educationis not only to transmit knowledge, but to teach learners how to learn, and to master thelifelong capacity, meanwhile learners' beliefs will affect the development ofautonomous learning. Without exception, domestic studies on learners' belief aboutautonomous learning mostly take Han nationality students as subjects. It is rare tostudy Uygur students. Therefore, this paper tends to make some exploration, andinvestigates Uygur students' beliefs about autonomous learning.This study chose127English majors students in the department of XinjiangScience&Information College as subjects, in order to study current situation ofUygur students' beliefs about autonomous learning. This paper uses an adaptedquestionnaire based on Horwitz's BALLI and Cotterall's questionnaire of autonomouslearning, which contains37questions with six variables. They are: understanding ofautonomous learning, taking responsibility for one's learning, learner factors affectingautonomous learning, teacher's role, learners' motivation, and learning strategies. Theresearch questions are:1) What general beliefs about autonomous learning do Uygurstudents hold?2) Are there any differences between sophomore and senior students inbeliefs about autonomous learning? If yes, what are they?3) What's the relationshipbetween beliefs about autonomous learning and motivation, autonomous learning andstrategies use? For the purpose of providing answers to the three research questions,the author employed descriptive analysis, independent T-test and Pearson correlationrespectively.Conclusions from the study are as follows:1) Uygur students' positive beliefsabout autonomous learning: they are willing to take responsibility for their ownlearning, meanwhile they agree that the role of teacher is vital and indispensable inclass. They like getting involved in classroom activities, and more intrinsically motivated than extrinsically motivated.2) Uygur students' negative beliefs aboutautonomous learning: most students hold wrong ideas about the concept ofautonomous learning, and they know little about learning strategies.3) There are nosignificant differences between sophomore and senior students' beliefs aboutautonomous learning. Students' learning beliefs are relatively stable.4) There is apositive and significant correlation between beliefs about autonomous learning andmotivation, autonomous learning and strategies use in English learning.This study provides some implications for Uygur English teaching and learning.First of all, teachers should realize the changing roles in their teaching. In addition tointroducing learning strategies combined with class instruction in a systematic way,they should also provide students with multichannel chances to use learning strategies.Finally, teachers can help students evaluate their English learning by giving themimmediate and appropriate feedback. As for students, more responsibilities should betaken for their learning. They must understand what is autonomous learning clearly tobetter improve their awareness. Moreover, teachers and students should be providedcorresponding learning strategy training and guidance. With the training, teachers canreflect on teaching processes, and search for effective approaches, students canachieve the ultimate goal of autonomous learning through a sequence of strategytraining.