Cultivation Of English-major Students’ Autonomous Learning Ability

Learners should have the autonomous learning ability in order to adapt to the modern society in which knowledge is increasing and information is updated constantly. This paper shows English teaching models on how to cultivate students’ autonomous learning ability through the analysis of three learning theories----humanist learning theory, cognitive learning theory and constructivism learning theory. Talking about humanist learning theory, the author emphasizes the relationship between teachers and students. Teachers are not the authorities to impart knowledge to students, but the helpers to help students solve problems. The author discusses the cultivation of metacognitive learning strategies and the relationship between autonomous learning ability and metacognitive learning strategies. According to the constructivism learning theory, the author thinks that learning should be the process in which learners construct their knowledge structures by themselves and knowledge cannot be acquired through teachers’teaching, but learners acquire it through constant accumulation by themselves. In order to master the new knowledge, learners should combine the prior knowledge with new knowledge together and understand the new knowledge through coding those prior knowledge. As for the English teaching models about how to cultivate students’ autonomous learning ability, the author thinks they can be designed from the perspectives of providing learners with some learning goals, learning resources, alternative learning strategies, metacognitve learning strategies, self-monitoring cultivation and so on. And all these aspects will boost teachers to form "target-oriented teaching" model.In this kind of classes using target-oriented teaching model, the teaching activities should be designed as the forms of discussion, cooperative learning. Another teaching model is the "situational teaching" model in which teachers should use multi-media technology to play videos or audios and teachers should also invite some students in the class to perform on the platform in order to create the real situations. Teachers and students should have communication when they want to achieve the same goal. If students have some questions, they will get the answers through communication. Since there is a necessary communication between teachers and students, this teaching model is called communicative teaching model. All these teaching models are based on discussions of humanist learning theory, cognitive learning theory and constructivism learning theory. All these teaching models will hugely stimulate students to form autonomous learning ability. The creative point of this thesis is to put the three learning theories together to use them to form the needed teaching models which teachers should create for cultivating students’ autonomous learning ability. There are some practical and theoretical significances for providing teaching models to cultivate autonomous learning ability.In a word, this paper will provide some teaching models to cultivate students’ autonomous learning ability through the analysis of humanist learning theory, cognitive learning theory and constructivism learning theory. Teachers should play the roles of helpers and problem-solvers to provide some learning goals, learning resources, and the cultivation of metacognition strategies. Moreover, teachers should also cultivate students’self-monitoring ability and self-evaluation ability during their learning processes so that students can form the autonomous learning ability gradually.