College English Materials And Learner Autonomy

For thousands of years, educators have considered autonomy as an important concept in teaching and learning. However, the idea of autonomy was not officially introduced into the field of foreign language teaching and learning until the 1960's. After Henry Holec first made the definition of learner autonomy, this idea has been actively discussed through these years. Teaching methods are researched into to promote learners' autonomous abilities.The theory of learner autonomy is supported by Cognitivism, Humanism and Constructivism. In the cognitive-based teaching model, students are supposed to take an active part in learning and teachers help students to develop learning strategies and thinking abilities. Meta-cognitionists look into students' self-awareness and self-control of their emotions and assist learners to plan, monitor and evaluate their learning process. Humanism treats learners as "whole person". It takes students' feelings and emotions into account, and considers students as the main role in cognition and teachers as facilitators. Constructivism states that knowledge cannot be taught but are constructed by the learner by reorganization and restructuring of their own experience. Learners should be responsible for their own learning in constructive approaches.With the debate on whether learners in eastern culture can accept the concept of autonomy, Chinese researchers started to find ways to adapt the teaching and learning model to suit autonomous learning. They adjusted the classroom-teaching model, changing from "teacher-centered" to "student-centered", and endow students with learning strategies that might help them to learn by themselves in the future. However, another important parameter in developing students' autonomous abilities, which is the material employed, is neglected.In this thesis, Chinese College English materials are taken as the research subject. The materials included are New College English by Zhejiang University, College English (revised edition) by Fudan University, Experiencing English by Higher Educational Press, and New Horizon College English by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. These four sets of widely used College English materials are analyzed with the focus on autonomous training according to a checklist designed with the view of languageteaching in cognitivism, humanism and constructivism. The checklist is designed based on the three theories mentioned above and composes of three parts: pre-learning activities, while-learning activities and post-learning activities. In the checklist, specific questions are offered to help to evaluate the materials. By examining into these materials, the writer points out their merits and demerits on learner autonomy respectively according to the checklist.Finally, the writer made some suggestions for future users of the materials to make up for the unsatisfying parts in autonomous training and supply the missing elements by themselves. The suggestions include: adding learning objectives at the beginning of each unit, activating students' background knowledge by pre-reading activities, adjusting the passage into a proper length, balancing the practise of four skills, and providing evaluation section at the end of the unit. To improve students' autonomous learning abilities, these suggestions should be taken into account by College English teachers and added into their teaching procedure. Those learners without direct help of teachers can also consider these instructions and develop their abilities consciously.