Chinese First-year Undergraduates' And Postgraduates' Beliefs About Autonomous Language Learning: A Survey Study

Based on sociolinguistics, cognitive psychology and humanist psychology, this thesis introduces a survey study of learner beliets toward autonomy, which aims to examine learners' beliefs about the following factors: the role of the teacher, knowledge of language [earning strategies, the nature of language, etc.. It also seeks to trace the reasons behind the beliefs, consider the implications of these findings, and tries to give some possible suggestions to encourage and enable learners to adopt autonomous approaches in their language learning. It attempts to find answers to these two questions:(1) Are Chinese first-year Non-English majors ready for autonomy?(2) Do first-year postgraduates and undergraduates have the same degree of autonomy in language learning?Through data-analysis and comparison of the results, it comes to the following conclusion:(1) Both undergraduates and postgraduates show a positive attitude toward autonomous language learning. They are willing to take responsibility for their learning.(2) Compared with postgraduates, undergraduates are more dependent on the teacher because they are not so self-confident and they lack essential knowledge and skills to take charge of their own learning. Hence, teachers should try to give learners successful learning experiences to increase their confidence, and to provide learner training to arouse their awareness toward autonomous language learning and increase their knowledge and skills.(3) Compared with undergraduates, postgraduates have the same problem: lack of essential knowledge and skills. But they are more confident and independent of the teachers, and demand more freedom and autonomy in their learning. So it is high time that we changed the traditional classroom language teaching model and left it mostly their own business to deal with their learning.