A Survey Of Attitudes Toward Autonomous Learning Of Non-English Majors

The field of foreign language learning and teaching has been in a constant state of change over the last twenty years. The main one has been a shift of focus from the teacher onto the language learner. The shift is a combined result of social development and research achievements in diverse fields such as psychology, cognitive psychology, sociology, and linguistics. However, teaching learners to become more independent is one thing, and how learners experience this and what they think of it, is another. Autonomous language learning behaviour may be supported by a particular set of beliefs and attitudes, and the beliefs learners hold may either contribute to or impede the development of their potential of autonomy. Attitudes are usually seen as the products of socialization and therefore attitudes are modifiable.This study is a survey of 198 non-English majors' perspectives of English learning autonomy. And it is also an experiment on the two methods that are applicable to modifying the learners' attitudes towards autonomous learning. One is the teacher's training program with persuasion as the tool, and the other is e-learning with modern facilities as the means of stimulating the learners. The study is both qualitative and quantitative in nature and the quantitative data are analysed using SPSS11.5.The survey provides us a brief glimpse of the non-English majors' attitudes toward autonomous English learning at present. The findings show that the non-English majors have not got enough readiness for autonomous language learning,and four reasons are identified. They are: (1) lack of proper motivation;(2) the lack of cognitive strategies;(3) the lack of enough confidence in learning; and (4) poor management of time. Five factors are examined and analyzed separately for specification. They are (1) the role of the teacher; (2)the role of feedback; (3)leamer independence; (4)metacognitive knowledge;(5) learner confidence.Both teacher's training program and e-learning course have been adopted aiming at modifying the students' present attitudes towards autonomy. Results show the students have achieved an increased autonomous awareness especially in terms of their metacognitive knowledge.Three major implications are drawn from the survey: 1) the students' attitudes towards autonomous learning can be modified through organized training; 2) the teacher's guiding role in autonomous learning should never be ignored; 3) e-learning may become an option in promoting autonomy.