An Empirical Study On College Students’ Autonomous English Learning And Self-efficacy In Content Based Instruction

CBI (Content Based Instruction) is a foreign language teaching concept that refers to an organiccombination of language teaching with the information that learners acquire, which is different from thetraditional foreign language teaching that isolated from subject matters. Language skills are achieved byshifting the attention of instruction from the language itself to the learning content when teaching contentand language proficiency skills at the same time. CBI emphasizes student as a centered role, and paysattention to the students’ thinking development. Therefore, more and more Chinese foreign languageteaching scholars are concerned with the research on CBI. Now it is an informational age of knowledgeexplosion. Life-long learning and life-long education have become the leading learning beliefs in oursociety. In the process of building a learning-based society, it seems to be urgent to cultivate learners’sustainable learning competence. Hence, it is necessary for students to increase their autonomous learningability. Autonomous English learning refers to learners’ ability to understand and control the learningenvironments. English learners must set goals, select strategies that help them achieve those goals,implement those strategies, and monitor the progress towards goals. Self-efficacy is one of the key factorsthat affect students’ autonomous learning, which refers to the beliefs about one’s capabilities to learn orperform behaviors at designated levels, and it is said to have a measure of control over individual’sthoughts, feelings and actions. However, the author found that researches on CBI and these two factors areconfined.A phenomenon shows that college students are in weak autonomous English learning with lower self-efficacy, so the author explores the following questions under the help of predecessors’ achievements:(1) Can CBI lead to a more positive effect on learners’ autonomous English learning in collegeEnglish class;(2) Is CBI more effective in improving learners’ self-efficacy of English learning in collegeEnglish class.The subjects of this research are96sophomores in North University of China, and their major is Mechanical Design&Manufacturing and Their Automation. Test on autonomous English learning abilityand self-efficacy were organized before and after applying CBI. Autonomous English learningquestionnaire (AELQ)(Zuo Xiangguo, Qi Xiaomei,2003) and self-efficacy of English learningquestionnaire (SELQ)(Li li, Chen Zhian and Jiang Yuhong,2006) in Chinese are adopted as theexperimental instrument, Software SPSS17.0for calculating subjects’ experimental measurement, andPaired-samples Test is to illustrate if there is a significant difference before and after the experimentsamples on the score. Research has shown firstly, CBI can lead to a more positive effect on learners’autonomous English learning in college English class, in which the four dimensions (motivation, attitudeand autonomous learning skills, self monitoring and evaluation) have a certain improvement than before.Besides, most of the students’ learning styles have been changed from passive receiving to activeexploration with CBI. Secondly, three dimensions (confidence of English learning, judgment of learningproblems as well as management) of learners’ English learning self-efficacy also have certain enhancement.So CBI is more effective in improving learners’ self-efficacy of English learning in college English class.In general, we can draw a conclusion from this study that it is feasible for applying CBI theory in collegeEnglish class.According to the main findings, pedagogical implications are given as follows:(1) More than just a language instructor, a qualified college English teacher should act as differentroles in Content Based Instruction.(2) In the implementation of CBI, students especially those of lower English proficiency should bepaid more attention.(3) There needs a balance between the language and content in the implementation of CBI, which isindispensible.