A Study On Autonomous Learning Of English Major Students In Vocational College

The concept of "autonomous learning", since it was introduced in "Autonomy and Foreign Language Learning" which was published in 1981 by Holec, H. who introduced it into foreign language learning, has become a hot topic in foreign language teaching. Nowadays, with the deepening of the China's reform and opening-up and the faster economic development, higher vocational education has been the important component of higher education and accounted for half of higher education. However, due to the lower entry score, most of the students enrolled in vocational college are weak in study and their overall quality is relatively low. Vocational college students will meet more challenges after graduation, so it is necessary for them to learn how to take responsibility for their own learning at school and develop their autonomous learningConsequently, in order to improve the autonomous English learning ability of the students in vocational college, the current research analyzes the autonomous learning of 60 English majors in Xiamen Huatian Institute by using a questionnaire, finding that most students are inadequate in autonomous learning. As successful students have marked difference from unsuccessful students in English learning, the teacher divides the students into two groups—successful students and unsuccessful students. The author first compares the unsuccessful students and successful students on autonomous learning through the questionnaire. The data shows that unsuccessful students are obviously weak at self-efficacy beliefs, awareness of task knowledge and attitudes to teachers'role and to teachers'feedback. That means they should work harder on these aspects.At the same time, the author finds that although successful students show greater self-learning ability in various ways:positive self-perception, understanding of task knowledge and use of strategies, attitudes towards teacher's role and feedback, and attitudes in seeking for learning assistance, they are hindered by the following aspects: misunderstood the purposes of autonomous learning, underestimated learners'control over the learning especially on pace, lacked a concrete study plan for the learning and goal statements to enhance learning persistency, lacked self-evaluating strategies and self-assessing tools. The author also designs a training package in order to help the successful students get better autonomous learning.