An Investigation Of Autonomous English Learning Attitude And Behavior Of Students In Language Training Center

Learner autonomy has been a topic of wide discussion in western countries since 1980s. A considerable number of Chinese researchers in recent years have also shown great interest in this area. Most of these studies take university or college students under the traditional way of teaching as their subjects. In the mean time, during the past few years, language training institute, a private business organization which provides enrolled learners with an intensive and usually short-period program of language training or test preparation, attracts more and more attention of the public and large numbers of their subsidiary schools or learning centers sprung up across this country, and millions of English learners register courses in these centers each year. A special feature of trainees in these learning centers is that they are of a great variety, either in their education background or English level, though most of them are college students.It is still not clear that what learner autonomy is like among these students in general, whether there is any significant gap between trainees of different education background and English level, and if the attitude and behavior of autonomous learning are as significantly correlated as they are among ordinary university students. To solve these questions, the present study examined the background quo of language training center learners' autonomous English learning and attempted to present a picture of their autonomous learning situation.204 valid questionnaires of the learners' attitude and behavior of autonomous English learning were collected and processed via Statistical Package for Social Science, of which Independent Samples T-test, Means, One-Way ANOVA and Two-Way ANOVA were applied to analyze the collected data. Face-to-face interview of 20 randomly selected respondents was also conducted to make sure that the answers on questionnaire truly reflect their real thoughts and behaviors.The findings of the study revealed that (1) the majority of training school learners took the initiative to sign up for the training program because they thought this would be helpful for them, and only a fraction of trainees joined the classes either because their parents enrolled for them and pushed them there or they were persuaded by their classmates or friends; (2) trainees generally hold a very positive attitude towards autonomous English learning and display a medium to high level of autonomous English learning behaviors during their learning process; (3) there is no significant difference between male and female learners in both their attitude and behavior of autonomous English learning; (4) the two groups of learners with various education backgrounds, namely, key university student and working adult learners, and average university, college and senior high school student learners show significant difference in both the autonomous English learning attitude and behavior. And the two groups are most divided in the attitude of planning, and the most drastic differences in this part come from "devise timetable for English learning" and "decide after-class learning". Surprisingly, average university, college and senior high school student learners are significantly more positive in "cooperative learning" than the other group. Key university student and working adult learners perform autonomous English learning behaviors significantly more often than average university, college and senior high school student learners; though no great difference was detected at the part of strategy use. And average university, college and senior high school student learners assess their progress in English significantly more frequently than key university student and working adult learners; (5) their attitude and behavior were significantly correlated, however, the correlation was not high enough to guarantee that positive attitudes will bring about high frequency of autonomous English learning behaviors.Suggestions on the promotion of learner autonomy in language training centers' teaching were also provided, as well as how university teachers and students might draw inspiration from the findings of this study.