An Empirical Study Of English Autonomous Learning Of Higher Vocational-Technical College Students

Ever since the early 1970s, there has been a steady interest in shifting the focus of foreign language teaching from teacher-centeredness to learner-centeredness. In recent years, learner autonomy has become a prominent topic in the educational circles and also a new trend of foreign language teaching. The term "learner autonomy" was first put forward in 1981 by Henri Holec in his book Autonomy and Foreign Language Learning. According to Holec, learner autonomy is "the ability to take charge of one's own learning". A learner is considered autonomous when he or she is able to set the learning objectives; select the contents, the materials and methods to be used; determine the time, place and progressions and evaluate what has been acquired. Ever since the birth of the concept, many linguists and researchers have paid great attention to it and substantial researches and exploration on it have been carried out.A great deal of research concerning learner autonomy has been carried out in the western countries, focusing not only on the rationale of learner autonomy from pedagogical and philosophical point of view, but also on the means of facilitating the development of learner autonomy. In recent years, the study of learner autonomy has also received increasing attention from teachers and researchers in China, but the relevant studies either stay on pure theoretical framework, or belong to empirical research that compares results between the control group and the experimental group. Although in these years there appear the researches aiming to investigate the students' autonomous learning competence, most of them concentrate on the normal four-year university students, including English majors and non-English majors. This study is a tentative research on the students of high vocational technical colleges (HVTC). With an attempt to fill up such a research gap, this study sets out to examine the level of non-English majors' autonomous English learning competence, to identify students' autonomous problems, and to find out possible strategies to improve HVTC students autonomous English learning competence in the current Chinese context. One hundred and forty six students from three grades of Jinan TV and Radio College participated in this study, all of them being required to complete the questionnaire adapted from Wen (1995), Broady (1996), Littlewood (1999). The questionnaire is composed of 30 items on a five-point Likert Scale, which covers five areas: identifying what has been taught; formulating the learning objectives; selecting and implementing appropriate learning strategies; monitoring the use of learning strategies; monitoring and evaluating the learning. The choices they made were transformed into frequencies, means and standard deviations by SPSS 11.5 for window program, and all the results were presented in tables. From the questionnaire we can get that students' competence of autonomous learning is different with their grades, genders and education background. In order to get more detailed information about students' autonomous problems, informational interviews were conducted on twelve students after the questionnaire. By analyzing, explaining, comparing, evaluating and commenting on the major findings of the study by referring to theories concerning the learner autonomy, the author got implications guiding English language teaching and learning, thus proposing some tentative suggestions. For example, it is necessary for teachers to be aware of students' learning beliefs, by way of which they will be able to adopt scientific methods to help them to build up correct beliefs and motivation so as to release the students' high tension of language learning; by forming comfortable class environment, increasing communication with students, eliminating the bias toward the students with lower proficiency, and setting up correct attitude toward those proficiency tests, the teachers will be able to increase the students' confidence in English learning, and help them release the pressure brought forth by various tests.Results from the study show that the overall degree of HVTC students' autonomous learning stays at a low level. They are lack of ability to set practical learning goals, to carry out the plan, to create opportunities to practice English, to apply appropriate learning strategies and to assess learning outcomes. Most of them turn out to be passive, dependent and less autonomous in English learning.Further discussion is done about the results of the present study endeavoring to find explanations to the findings. The significance and pedagogical implications are also mentioned. And those factors affecting Chinese HVTC students' autonomous competence deserve the concerted efforts of all the Chinese foreign language teachers. It is especially important and necessary to enhance the competence of learning autonomy of those HVTC students.