| Learner autonomy has been more and more widely accepted and preferred by educationists and teachers in many fields concerning teaching and learning: adult education, self-directed learning schemes, self-access centers, etc. In spite of its advantages, we must also realize autonomy is anything but an easy and absolute option. Complete autonomy is an achievable, but idealistic goal. There do exist degrees of autonomy. So how to apply it successfully in different situations and find the appropriate mode or "degrees" of autonomy suitable for specific contexts has become an urgent issue confronting all researchers and teachers.Compared with the research in foreign countries, China's study on learner autonomy has somewhat lagged behind. Concerning China-specific autonomy, there has been very little research. So in order to implement this concept successfully, we need to find the specific mode of learner autonomy suitable for our particular EFL teaching context, so as to benefit language teaching and learning to the greatest extent-the original drive for the present study. In this study, the present author tries to formulate a tentative framework of autonomy which is specific to China's EFL teaching in universities. Based on this framework, a questionnaire survey has been conducted to find the specific autonomous competence of our students. The findings reveal that Chinese students do display a certain degree of autonomy in some aspects: selecting, self-monitoring, evaluating and regulating learning strategies; having clear learning objectives; being able to assess knowledge of English; being well motivated to learn, etc. But in other areas, our students are quite weak in learning autonomously: managing study plans; monitoring and evaluating learning processes; assessing learning results; not taking enough responsibilities outside class, etc. The findings highlight the aspects in which teachers can and should make efforts to foster learner autonomy. |
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