From Teacher-Centered To Learner-Centered

There is a strong link between the teaching effects and teaching methods. The current English teaching in Chinese colleges and universities is basically "teacher-centered". That is to say, the teacher explain the text for most of the time, supplemented with a certain number of communicative language activities, while the students' main task is to listen to the teacher and take notes. According to Professor Shu Dingfang' investigation in a university of Jiangsu Province, one of the contents of which is teaching method in classroom, surprisingly, there are more than 70% teachers who admit that the grammar translation method is their main classroom teaching method. They explain that they know the communicative teaching method is popular at present, but because of various reasons such as the students' level, the teacher's language foundation, the limited time, the number of the students and the pressure of exams etc, teacher and students eventually find that the grammar translation method is practical. The investigation of Ms. Xia Jimei (2002) also shows that 90% teachers consider mat the main role of college English teachers is as a language instructor. And 77% teachers think the main function of teachers in teaching is to instruct the way of language learning and cultivate the ability of language learning. The two investigations show that many teachers know what should do but don't do it in fact The teacher-centered method does the most of things which should be done by the students, reducing the student from an autonomous leaner, and creative and critical thinker to a mechanical recipient of knowledge. Therefore we should seek for a new teaching method in order to solve the current problems of Chinese English teaching. Learner autonomy is a teaching mode which can serve as a satisfactory way to achieve our teaching goal.As an ancient proverb goes, give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him how to fish and he eats for a lifetime. One of the chief objectives of education in the 21st...