An Investigation On Autonomous Learning Beliefs And Autonomous Learning Behaviors Of Non-English Majors

Learner autonomy has been greatly accepted as one of ultimate goals of education.This research aims to explore the developmental patterns of students‘autonomouslearning beliefs and behaviors for college non-English major students, dig out therelationship between autonomous learning beliefs and behaviors, and find out whether thedevelopmental patterns differ among students of different proficiencies and genders in twosuccessive years.The research is quantitative and qualitative in nature, using both questionnaires andinterviews as research instruments. College Students‘Autonomous English LearningBelief Questionnaire and College Students‘Autonomous English Learning BehaviorQuestionnaire were administrated to sophomores, chosen randomly from two intactclasses of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in2010, followed byinterviews conducted among four students selected from low/high proficiency groups andfemale/male groups respectively. We strictly replicated the survey and interviews in2011,involving the same two classes and four interviewees. The valid data was collected fromthe same112subjects for two years in succession. SPSS16.0was used for analyzing thedata.The findings reveals that (1) college students‘autonomous English learning beliefsand behaviors are both in high levels and they fall significantly from Grade2to Grade3;(2) autonomous English learning beliefs are statistically higher than behaviors;(3)statistically differences of autonomous English learning beliefs and behaviors exist amongstudents of different proficiencies;(4) statistically differences of autonomous Englishlearning beliefs and behaviors exist among students of different genders. This paper thussheds light on how to promote learner autonomy by connecting both autonomous Englishlearning beliefs with behaviors in EFL which is seldom seen in previous research.