An Exploration Of Learner Autonomy Of English Majors

For a long time, the relationship between teachers and learners has been unbalanced. It is featured by teachers' dominance and control in classroom and learners' passive acceptance of whatever teachers say and do to them. But with the development of educational psychology going deeper into the individual being, such an unbalanced relationship between teachers and students has received more and more questioning and critics. And the latter half of the twentieth century has witnessed a marked shift of attention from teaching to learning in the field of foreign language education. Inherent in the shift of focus, these is a recent tendency to emphasize autonomous learning in which students are supposed to take more responsibilities in foreign language classrooms. As such, a hot argument and research about autonomy in language learning has emerged. In the study, the researcher intends to explore the learners' view of language learning and tries to understand learners' language awareness and psychological readiness towards learner autonomy. Besides, an exploration on the knowledge needed to develop autonomy is made. And possible ways to develop autonomy in Chinese context are put forward.The thesis is composed of five chapters and a brief conclusion. Chapter one is a general introduction and the last part is a conclusion to the whole thesis. Chapter two presents an exploration of the concepts and theories related to autonomy. Firstly, autonomy is defined as the extent to which learners demonstrate the ability to use a set of tactics taking control of their learning. The tactics include setting goals, choosing materials and tasks, planning practice opportunities and monitoring and evaluating progress. Learners display these tactics to varying degrees. The beliefs and attitudes learners hold have a profound influence on their learning behaviors, so this variability is accounted for, in part, by differences in learner beliefs about language learning. The thesis argues therefore, that before interventions aimed at fostering autonomy are implemented,it is necessary to gauge learners' readiness for the changes in beliefs and behaviors which autonomy implies. Secondly, it outlines the correspondence between three versions of autonomy (technical, psychological, political) and three approaches to issues of knowledge and learning (positivism, constructivism and critical theory), which serves as the theoretical foundation for the exploration of learner autonomy. Lastly, it seeks to the theoretical rationale of the factors concerned with learner beliefs, including motivation theory, Locus of control, attribution theory, and self-efficacy theory. All these serve as a prelude for the coming profound exploration.And then it comes to the third chapter-an exploration of learner's readiness towards autonomy of English majors, in which data were collected in the form of questionnaire. The participants were 180 juniors majoring in English from Qufu Normal University, Shandong Normal University and Shandong Financial College. The questionnaire sought primarily to the beliefs about variables implicated in successful SLA that are considered important by researchers interested in learner autonomy. After the analysis to the data, we come to know that most of the subjects are inclined to take responsibility for their learning. The teacher's role as an authority figure in classroom is at odds with those opinions held by proponents of autonomous learning. The view of teachers as counselor, facilitator and mediator seems to be more consonant with beliefs about how autonomy could be fostered. It is encouraging that most of the learners have strong sense of language awareness, that is, the beliefs about the nature of language learning held by SLA searchers are also held by the learners. In addition, the strategies singled out for investigation in the questionnaire represent important knowledge and behavior for learners who wish to assume responsibility for aspects of their language learning. However, the two strategies-about how to check one's...