A Modefied Model Of Cognitive Learning Autonomy

The increasing interest in autonomy as an educational goal can be traced back to the changes that occurred in the 20th century in the area of social sciences, psychology, philosophy, and linguistics. Especially since the Second World War, the ideas of autonomy and self-direction came into the closer scrutiny and analysis of researchers, which led to consequent changes in beliefs in education, theories in language learning. A widely- accepted idea is that"learning how to learn"is far more important than knowledge itself. In the field of language teaching research work, vast investigations in learning autonomy had never ceased from 1960s'to 1990s', till later the concept of learner autonomy, as the core concept of"learner-centeredness"-the dominant ideology in education, became a popular focus of debate in foreign language teaching.Almost all researchers seem to have such an agreement that autonomy or autonomous learning is a dynamic, free and ideal state in the process of human cognition and knowledge-processing procedure, and thus it is universally feasible or applicable. They seldom reflect the ethical & cultural context in which the concept autonomy is rooted. The reason that almost all research work in learning autonomy in Asian countries (such as Japan, Korea, Pakistan, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, even in the mainland of China) met with less than convincing results lies in the fact that most of the researchers tried to"copy"or just"transplant"the western culturally and ethically biased concept of learning autonomy into their own classroom, misconceptualizing it as a steady, dogmatic state which can be achieved, once and for all (cf. Esch, 1996a:37), trying to"impose"a belief in leaning on totally different learners. The result always turned out to be the opposite.This thesis, by adopting J.Anderson's ACT-R model as its theoretical foundation, from the cognitivist point of view, tries to redefine the concept of learning autonomy under the Chinese Confucian ethical and cultural context. Our study is based on the belief that learning autonomy is a flexible, dynamic, and progressive process; full consideration is given to the cultural differences of our learners, thus endowing our"modified model"of learning autonomy with more applicability and operationability. The present study is based on the College Teaching Reform Project in Henan Institute of Science & Technology. Our investigation shows that: (a) the modified model of learning autonomy is more culturally and contextually applicable; (b) the language classroom is still the best place for encouraging learners to move towards autonomy; (c) teachers still play an important role in promoting the modified model of learner autonomy in Chinese EFL/ESL classroom teaching.