English Learner Autonomy Strategies: A Comparative Research On College And Middle School Students In China

Since Holec published Autonomy and Foreign Language Learning in 1981, learner autonomy has become one of the most important research topics in many fields of education, especially, in second language learning and teaching. In the field of learning, learner autonomy is seen as a kind of learning method with high levels. Researchers are concerned about how to improve the students' academic performance levels through self-regulation in learning, so that students can become effective learners. In the field of teaching, learner autonomy is considered as a pivotal teaching method. The researchers are concerned about how to overcome the students' passive learning in order to show their subjectivity. Since the 1990s, learner autonomy has been seen as a key goal of education all over the world. The studies of its theories and application have become unprecedented prosperous, domestic and foreign scholars have done a lot of researches on the topic and have made great achievements.Most of these studies, however, have focused on defining learner autonomy and analyzing the related theories and how to foster students' autonomous learning ability. There are very few researches on individual differences, especially the comparison between students in different stages of learning. Therefore, based on previous studies, this study was designed to investigate the learner autonomy strategies used by college and middle school students in China so as to find similarities and differences between them. Specifically, the study intends to answer three questions:1) Are there any differences in the use of learner autonomy between college and middle school students in China?2) What are their differences if any? 3) What are the factors for the differences?In order to find answers to the first question, a questionnaire was administered to 30 English major juniors from Humanity and Science College of Northeast Normal University and 30 second-year middle school students from No.6 Middle School in Langfang City. In the first phase, the author has started the questionnaire to study English learner autonomy strategies between the college and middle school students based on the previous studies. The theoretical foundations for the questionnaire are the characteristics of learn autonomy described by Holec (1988) and Dickson (1992).The questionnaire options are used in the form of Likert Scale. According to different questions, the options of the questionnaire are designed from A to E, that is from the best to the worst.Then the author interviewed the same 60 students using the questions in the questionnaires. The interview was conducted in a very relaxed atmosphere so that the interviewees could express their view with tension.At the last stage both qualitative and quantitative analysis was applied to the data collected through the questionnaire and the interview, using the statistic software package SPSS 10.0. The results show:1) There are few similarities in English learner autonomy strategies between the college and middle school students in China. They are the same not only in the skills of understanding teachers'teaching purposes and requirements, but also in the skills of establishing learning goals and making learning plans.2) More differences have been found in the skills of using learning strategies, skills of monitoring the use of learning strategies and the skills of monitoring and evaluating the process of learning English. The results indicate that Chinese middle school students own lower English learner autonomy ability and less English learner autonomy consciousness. Compared with middle school students, Chinese college students own higher English learner autonomy ability.3) There are two possible factors for the differences including the internal barriers caused by the learners themselves and external barriers which the learners cannot decide or choose.The paper consists of five chapters. The first chapter first introduces the rationale and aim of the study and then discusses the significance of such a study. In the second language acquisition field, a large number of researchers have studied learner autonomy. Especially in the information age, learner autonomy is also very important for Chinese students to improve their English levels. In a word, leaner autonomy plays an important role both in the personal growth and social development. The third section of this chapter is an outline of the structure of the paper.The second chapter is literary review, where the author reviews definition of learner autonomy. In general, there are three implications of the definition of learner autonomy. First, autonomous learning is a kind of an internal mechanism which leads students to learn actively and is affected by the factors of learners'attitude, learners' ability and learning strategies. That is, the ability of controlling and guiding the students themselves. Such as, the abilities to make learning plans, select different learning methods according to different learning tasks, monitor the learning process and assess the learning results. Second, learner autonomy refers to the control of learning goals, learning contents, learning methods and learning materials for the learners. Generally speaking, that is the extent of the free choice for learners in the above areas. The education system including education administration, teaching curriculums, schools, teachers and textbooks gives the learners the extent of the free choice and tolerance. For the teaching practitioners, it is necessary to provide enough space for learner autonomy and coordinate the relationship between autonomous learning and the overall education goals. Third, learner autonomy is a kind of learning method, in which the learners make and finish the learning plans according to their own needs under the guidance and control of the teachers and the overall education goals. Certainly, such a learning method needs two essential premises that the learners have the ability of autonomous learning and the education system provides space of learner autonomy. In this chapter the author also introduces the related theoretical frameworks of leaning autonomy, the characteristics of learner Autonomy, learning strategies, types of learning strategy and motivation. At last, the author introduces the foreign and domestic studies on leaner autonomy.In the third chapter, the author describes the research questions, research subjects, research instruments and data collection.In the fourth chapter, the data collected through the questionnaire and the interview were analyzed so that similarities and differences in English learner autonomy strategies between college and middle school students could be found out. And then factors for the differences were discussed in this chapter.In the fifth chapter, the author concludes the major findings and implications of the study and points out the limitation of the study and makes some suggestions for future studies.