Fostering Non-English Majors' Autonomous English Learning Abilities In Higher Vocational College

With the development of the economic globalization and the expansion of global communication and cooperation, English as an important an important international communication language plays an increasingly important role in our political, economic and social life. More and more Chinese college students are aware of the demands and are trying to master this international language as power and an opportunity for their future development. While in the previous years, the traditional spoon-feeding teaching method ----teacher first, students second, forces the students to be the passive, reluctant recipients. They have no chance to practice their English, therefore, they are still unable to listen, speak, read or write well, their abilities to use English are still very low.This phenomenon is especially evident in the Higher Vocation Colleges. In order to change this situation, since the early 20century, with the prevalence of Constructivism, more and more English linguists and English teachers of all kinds of colleges begin to turn their attentions to students---the main part of study. They have called for a move in language teaching towards student-centered autonomous learning. Therefore, how to help the students with cultivating and achieving the autonomous learning abilities have long been the research task for teachers of all kinds of colleges. But all of these researches are commonly performed in some normal universities; there has little research on non-English major students'autonomous English learning in Higher Vocational College. Therefore, the thesis will focus its investigation and study on this field.The study is an empirical study which aims to investigate non-English major students'knowing and understanding about this concept, present their current situation of autonomous English learning and examine the factors that possibly hinder their improvement in autonomous learning abilities by employing the real and valid investigation through questionnaire and interview. The designed questionnaire was administered to 200 second grade students from the 10 different non-English majors in Hebei Engineering and Technical College. The data was analyzed statistically with Statistical Package for Social Science 13.0(SPSS 13.0) using descriptive statistics. The results show clearly that they have never known or understood the autonomous learning. They are accustomed to the traditional educational models and willing to follow the old routines of the teaching methods in the learning. The current situation of non-English major students'autonomous learning abilities is unsatisfactory and the overall level of it is rather low. The students usually hold a passive or negative attitude towards autonomous English learning. The majority of the students have no exact aims and schedule in the English learning; they seldom employ appropriate learning strategies to learn autonomously. Most of the students have strong reliance on their teachers in English learning. The overwhelming majority of the students in the investigation are disappointed about the current in-class and after-class environment. They have rather low efficiency in creating the favorable learning environment and doing well in controlling the disturbance from the environment itself and learning autonomously.Then, based on the results, some implications for fostering non-English majors'autonomous learning are provided. They include that improving the students'awareness of autonomous English learning, cultivating students'positive attitude and motivation on it, training the students'learning strategies, transferring the role of the teacher, and creating a favorable learning environment. The thesis also presents some recommendations on fostering non-English majors'autonomous learning in the Higher Vocational College with the hope that the other teachers might benefit something from it.