A Study On Enhancing Non-english Majors' Learner Autonomy Under Web-based Teaching And Learning Environment

The concept of"autonomous learning"first originated from discussion on the development of life-long and independent learning skills. It has been and is still an important concern in the field of education and psychology. In EFL (English as Foreign Language), it has become the common knowledge that the ultimate goal of language teaching and learning is autonomous learning. Holec (1981:23-25), one of the early advocates of autonomous learning, points out that there are two objectives of foreign language teaching, one to help learners acquire communicative skills and the other to help them acquire autonomy. Web can expose students to a lot of learning resources, which facilitate their learning on their own. Plus, teachers can conduct a variety of teaching activities via web, such as having online communications with the students, setting assignments, correcting students'homework, etc. Therefore, web makes it convenient for students to conduct autonomous learning.With the widespread application of multimedia and website to English teaching, a lot of institutions begin to incorporate web into English teaching. Under such circumstance, it calls for the students to acquire necessary autonomous learning abilities so that they can adapt themselves to and perform better in the new teaching and learning environment. While the fact is that there exist some problems in students'autonomous learning. For instance, some students are learning blindly, some are doing poorly in web information processing, and some others are short of the ability to have an appropriate reflection and assessment on their learning. Thus, the problems mentioned above may lead to the low efficiency of students'autonomous learning. As a result, the multimedia and Internet are not brought into full play. The performance and results of students'autonomous learning are far from satisfactory.Consequently, this thesis reports on a study concerning how to enhance non-English majors'learner autonomy under web-based autonomous teaching and learning environment. The researcher attempted to incorporate PEW, that is, Portfolio, Email, and NHCE (New Horizon College English) Website into the teaching and learning environment, and investigated the effectiveness in enhancing students'learner autonomy by comparison of two tests results and questionnaires.In order to justify the feasibility of the investigation regarding learner autonomy, the researcher proceeds by presenting an overview of some previous researches and relevant theories on web-based autonomous learning at home and abroad, which is comprised of the definition of the learner autonomy, elements affecting learner autonomy, studies of autonomous learning at home and abroad, and some aspects related to web-based autonomous language learning.Then the researcher introduces her own experimental study, which aims at enhancing students'learner autonomy. The experiment involves two classes with 84 non-English major freshmen in Shanxi University of Finance & Economics for one semester. One is Experimental Class in which PEW was incorporated into the English teaching, and the other is Control Class whose subjects had no access to PEW. Two English proficiency tests were given before and after the experiment for the purpose of testing the subjects'English proficiency (hereinafter referred to as pre-test and post-test) and meanwhile testing whether there was bigger improvement for the subjects from Experimental Class than those from Control Class after PEW was adopted in Experimental Class for a semester. Besides, two questionnaires, involving students'metacognitive ability, learning motivation, learning strategy, goal setting, and attitudes towards teacher's role, were designed to investigate the learner autonomy of the subjects from Experimental Class and Control Class before and after the experiment. The data of the two tests and questionnaires were mainly analyzed via SPSS software (version 17.0). According to the analysis of both the tests and questionnaires, the researcher withdrew the findings as follows:1. The data from pre-test showed the similarity of the subjects'English proficiency from both Experimental Class and Control Class. After the adoption of new method PEW into the teaching and learning environment, the subjects from Experimental Class scored higher than those from Control Class in post-test.2. The data from questionnaires revealed that the learner autonomy of the subjects from both classes were almost the same before the experiment, and after the experiment, no striking differences were shown by statistical analysis between the subjects from both classes in terms of their learner autonomy. Nevertheless, the response of the subjects from Experimental Class to most of the statements scored a bit higher than those from Control Class, which showed the subjects from Experimental Class got a little more enhancement compared with those from Control Class.Consequently, the researcher tentatively draws the conclusion that the new method PEW did make a difference in improving students'English proficiency and the learner autonomy. It is hoped that the findings of this thesis will be enlightenment to educational practitioners.