An Investigation Into The Current Situation Of Vocational And Technical College ESP Freshmen's Autonomy In EFL Reading

There is no question that reading is one of the main resources for second language acquisition in an acquisition-poor environment. The advent of the information age offers tremendous opportunities to gain access to an almost infinite amount of information. Teaching learners how to read and take responsibility for their reading has become a task of top priority. This study was intended to investigate the current situation of vocational and technical college ESP freshmen's autonomy in EFL reading, and to explore possible factors accounting for it.In the study, four research questions were addressed:1. What is the current situation of vocational and technical college ESP freshmen's autonomy before reading?2. What is the current situation of vocational and technical college ESP freshmen's autonomy during reading?3. What is the current situation of vocational and technical college ESP freshmen's autonomy after reading?4. What are the possible factors leading to the current situation of vocational and technical college ESP freshmen's autonomy in EFL reading?In order to answer the research questions, two research designs were employed: the quantitative one, a questionnaire, and the qualitative one, interviews. Altogether sixty-nine ESP freshmen from Suzhou Polytechnical Institute of Agriculture were involved in the questionnaire, the purpose of which was to obtain data on the subjects'reported use of autonomous reading strategies. Twelve subjects were selected to take part in interviews to explore the possible factors leading to the current situation.The major findings were summarized as follows:1. The students displayed a low-to-medium degree of autonomy before reading. Nearly half of the students never, or rarely, had objectives before reading.2. The students also showed a low-to-medium degree of autonomy during reading. However, compared with their behaviors before reading, they were more autonomous in that the majority of the students developed the activity of management and monitoring during their reading. Only a small proportion of the students never or rarely developed these two activities.3. The students displayed once again a low-to-medium degree of autonomy after reading. More than half of the students never, or rarely, evaluated their effective use of strategies and the achievement of their goals. Compared with their degree of autonomy before reading and while reading, they showed the lowest degree of autonomy after reading.4. Many factors contribute to their current situation of autonomous reading; the main ones are their absence of intrinsic motivation, presence of extrinsic motivation, over-dependence on their teachers, low sense of self-efficacy and lack of professional training in reading strategies.However, there are two major limitations to the present study. First, the findings of this study are based upon a limited number of subjects located in one college in Suzhou. Given the small sample size, the generalizability of the findings needs further verification. Second, not all strategies or behaviors concerning autonomous reading could be included in the questionnaire due to the scope of the study.The findings of the study can assist the language instructors in creating an atmosphere conducive to learners'EFL reading and in designing tasks that can heighten the learners'use of autonomous reading strategies and their ability to be autonomous readers.