A Study Of Learner Autonomy From The Perspective Of Self-Efficacy

The rapid development of modern science and technology has not only turned the twenty-first century into an epoch of knowledge explosion but also accelerated the development of globalization. Life-long learning and life-long education have become the leading learning beliefs of our society. To build a learning-based society has become the education goal of the whole world. With the development of modern psychology and education theories, people have accepted the learning beliefs advocated by cognitive and humanist theories which are characterized by focusing on learning process and learners themselves. In the process of building a learning-based society, it appears to be urgent to cultivate learners'sustainable learning competence—learner autonomy. Learner autonomy has been a hot topic in the field of applied linguistics and foreign language teaching in recent two decades.On the basis of a literature review, the author attempts to study learner autonomy from the perspective of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy theory was first put forward by Bandura, an American psychologist in 1977. Bandura contends that self-efficacy is the belief in one's capability to learn or perform behaviors at designated levels (Bandura, 1977, 1986), which can influence the achievement of a person through cognitive, motivational, affective and selection processes. Self-efficacy is an important individual factor, but the study of the relationship between it and learner autonomy has not been enough, especially in China.The aim of the study is to help teachers and students find ways to foster learner autonomy and self-efficacy beliefs in English learning. To this end, the author first investigated 200 students of two universities in Shandong province through English Learner Autonomy Questionnaire and English Self-Efficacy Beliefs Questionnaire, then the author analyzed the data collected statistically by using SPSS 11.0 for Windows so as to explore the current situation of non-English majors'self-efficacy beliefs and learner autonomy in English learning as well as the correlation between them. To gain an in-depth understanding of what factors influenced the self-efficacy of Chinese non-English majors, the author also interviewed ten students randomly chosen.The investigation shows that: First, Chinese non-English majors have positive attitudes toward autonomous English learning, however, their current ability of learner autonomy is rather low. Second, Chinese non-English majors have low English self-efficacy, especially their specific English self-efficacy, which is mainly affected by lack of learning strategies, previous experience, teachers'self-efficacy and goal setting. Third, Chinese non-English majors'self-efficacy beliefs and learner autonomy in English learning have positive correlation. Fourth, there are no significant differences in self-efficacy and learner autonomy of Chinese non-English majors based on gender and specialty.In the light of the results of the study, the author tries to put forward some strategies to enhance students'self-efficacy beliefs and learner autonomy. These strategies are mainly as follows: helping students learn to set realistic goals; providing students with successful experience; guiding students to make right attribution of their success and failure; making good use of models; arousing awareness of students and teachers of learner autonomy and training students in the use of learning strategies.