Promoting College English Learner Autonomy Through Humanistic Teaching

Making good use of internet resources and setting up self-access language centers are fashionable in the current educational reform of China's universities. However, because of the unequal economic development and variant teaching strengths in China's different areas, many universities may have found their own difficulties in setting up their self-access language centers or providing free internet resources for the English learners. As for some universities, although they have provided some student-self-learning materials in their websites, few of them can function actually for the learners' autonomous EFL. Consequently, the current prevailing situation of college English teaching in most areas of China is characterized as: teaching resources relatively inadequate; teacher-authoritative, large-sized classes and textbook-dependent. Since in most cases college autonomous English learning is conducted under the guidance of the teachers, its successful implementation is closely related to the teachers' teaching perspectives and their corresponding teaching methods. In order to pursue the best teaching methods, the researchers and teachers have always been paying more attention to the language itself, referring little to the 'carriers' of the language—the language learners, especially their emotions, which are actually important factors of a "whole person" in the successful language learning. If the learners are accompanied by the affective obstacles such as anxiety, nervousness, or inhibition, they will perform passively in EFL and will hold negative attitudes towards EFL. As passive language learners, they are not expected to become successful in EFL. Therefore, we advocate, in order to improve further college English teaching, the study of learner autonomy and the learners' emotions should be emphasized except for the study of language itself. For the promotion of learner autonomy and the satisfaction of learners' emotions can not go without the implementation of humanism. Humanistic teaching, which emphasizes on satisfying learners' affective needs, aiming at people-oriented, reconstructing the learners' perception of college English learning , rebuilding the roles of the college English teachers, winning trust from the learners, easing the learners' anxiety, recognizing empathy between the teacher and the learners, preserving the learners' self-esteem, upgrading the learners' motivation, humanizing the English learning materials and encouraging critical thinking.Based on the actual situation of college English teaching in China, we attempt to introduce the idea of humanism into college English teaching because humanistic language teaching can respect and satisfy the learners' emotional needs, increase their self-concept, improve their communicative competence, explore their language learning potential, and finally achieve success on the promotion of English learner autonomy. The learner autonomy we advocate can not go without the important roles the college English teachers play in the humanistic language teaching, and it depends on their roles as democratic promoters, fosters of personal growth and facilitators. These three roles are interrelated for one goal—to build a psychologically safe and harmonious English learning environment for learners. In such an environment, the learners' affective needs can be greatly satisfied, their enthusiasm for English learning effectively aroused, their language potential promptly exploited, and the effect of EFL improved. It needs to be noted that the effect of humanistic language teaching on the promotion of learner autonomy can not be obtained immediately but gained gradually in such a secure language teaching environment built by humanism.This research is composed of six chapters. Chapter One is an introduction of the research purpose and significance. Chapter Two is on the literature review on the key term of the context—learner autonomy as well as our understanding on the learner autonomy and the educational thinking on autonomous learning. Chapter Three is on the theoretical background, in which the humanistic psychology and Krashen's Affective Filter Hypothesis (1987) are deeply elaborated. In the end of Chapter Three are three episodes that aroused our enthusiasm for this research. Chapter Four is the main body of the thesis. Based on the investigation into the current situation of the college English learning and the factors impeding college English learner autonomy, we have elaborated further on the humanistic measures and activities which are conducive to the promotion of college English learner autonomy. Chapter Five is on a teaching comparison experiment. With qualitative and quantitative analysis, we have ventured to make an experimental research of comparing the effect of humanistic language teaching and that of traditional language teaching for the purpose of discussing the influence of humanistic language teaching on the promotion of college English learner autonomy. Chapter Six is on the conclusion of this thesis: the implementation of humanistic language teaching in colleges can change the learners' attitude to themselves, their classmate's, their teachers and the English learning itself and consequently promote learner autonomy. Meanwhile, the challenging problems on the implementation of the humanistic English teaching in colleges have also been forecast.