Empirical Study On Fostering Learner Autonomy In The College English Reading Classroom In The Chinese Context

This study proposes that effective engagement of learner autonomy training with the framework of metacognitive strategies in classroom will be effective to foster learner autonomy in the perspective of L2 (English) reading. In this study, a training program with the framework of metacognitive strategies which is designed based on the previous research is experimented in one non-English Major Class in Chongqing University for 3 months. The questionnaires, pre-test, post-test and face-to-face interview are conducted to collect both quantitative and qualitative data. All the data collected from the experiment are analyzed by SPSS V10.0 to find out the effectiveness of the training program.We find in this study that the training with the framework of metacognitvie strategies to foster learner autonomy in reading classroom in China is helpful to foster and enhance learners'reading proficiency, metacognitive awareness and learner autonomy in the perspective of second language (L2) reading. Furthermore, we find that the pre-training for the teachers influence the effectiveness of training of learner autonomy to some extent.This dissertation consists of six chapters. Chapter One offers a brief introduction to the significance of this study, basic concept and structure of this dissertation. Chapter Two is the literature review: literature review of the theoretical background and relative empirical studies. It consists of the concepts of metacogntive strategies, L2 reading performance and learner autonomy, and the theoretical relationship among them. Then, it is the literature review of relative empirical studies on metacognition of L1 and L2 readers, training of metacognitive strategies of L1 and L2 readers and trainings for fostering learner autonomy. Chapter Three demonstrates the study which includes the outline of the training program and methodology of the study. Chapter Four goes to the result of the experiment. Chapter five is the discussion of the results. Chapter Six provides the major findings, implications and limitation of this study.