A Study Of Promoting English Major Students' Attitudes Toward Self-Access

Over the past centuries, the traditional teacher-centered classroom-teaching mode in language teaching and learning in schools has been prevailed all over the world. With the development of the society, various so-called new teaching methods emerged and disappeared quickly one after another. The key problem hasn't been solved yet, that is, the effectiveness of learning of the learners. One aspect of the teaching and learning has been always paid more attention to while the other has been overlooked. That is to say, teachers have been paying more attention to their teaching tactics and overlooking the learning of the students. Actually, learning plays a more important role than teaching in language teaching and learning in schools. Self-access language learning may help to improve the situation and it can stimulate students to use learning strategies of their choice. However, how to promote learners' attitudes toward self-access hasn't been paid enough attention to nowadays just because the decisive role of learners' attitudes toward self-access in self-access language learning has been overlooked although many training programs of self-access have been undertaken which "focus only on the teaching of tactics and strategies, overlooking other important factors such as learners' attitudes toward self-access, beliefs and expectations about language learning and teaching"(Victori and Lochhart 1995).This paper introduces a study of college students' attitudes toward self-access. The purpose of the study is to investigate the degree of readiness of the students at Jiaying College (Meizhou, Guangdong Province) to learn independently and test possible methods to influence their attitudes. The study attempts to answer three questions: (1) What attitudes do Jiaying College students have toward self-access or are they ready for self-access? (2) If they are not ready to accept self-access in learning, what might be the reasons? (3) Can proper training change these students' attitudes toward self-access?There are four chapters in the thesis. The first chapter is the literature review. In this chapter, theories on self-access and attitudes toward self-access are examined and discussed. Different definitions of Self-Access and its related terms are presented andthen the necessity of Self-Access application in language learning is analyzed. The relationship between attitude and beliefs and behaviors, factors influencing attitudes toward self-access are also discussed. Most important of all, the theories about how attitudes can be modified are discussed, which provides the theoretical foundation for the training program that follows. In the second chapter, the method and process of the study are described. There are two steps: the first is to investigate the attitudes and beliefs of the students and analyze the reasons if they are not ready for self-access; the second step is to provide necessary training and testing whether the method of the training works so that larger scales of experiment for self-access training can be on the way. Chapter 3 presents the results and its detailed analysis. Chapter 4 is the implication of the study results. Finally, the conclusion is drawn that the psychological preparation for the learners is both essential and feasible although it may undergo a long and complicated process.