Promoting Learner Autonomy For College Students By Learning Strategy Training

In recent years, learner autonomy has gradually become the concern of many foreign language teachers and learners. Learner autonomy is differentiated from "learning on your own" or "self- study". It is a capacity with which a learner can manage his or her own learning process. Through involvement in planning, monitoring and evaluating one's study, learners have greater control and take on more responsibility in making decisions and taking initiatives in learning. Empowering every student with this ability is the ultimate goal of language teaching. However, it is not innate, it must be nurtured. Fostering learner autonomy is closely related to learning strategies. In class, the teacher can train learners to have a broader repertoire of metacognitive and cognitive learning strategies known or unknown, and provide them opportunities to apply these strategies to their individual study.With the application of computer technology in foreign language teaching and learning, multimedia courseware for college English study has been widely used. Learners are given much more freedom for self-directed study. The author of the thesis maintains that by effectively using learning strategies and taking full advantage of computer-assisted language learning, learners can find ways most appropriate to them and develop their autonomy in foreign language learning.This thesis expounds the significance of developing autonomy for college students. And it discusses the relationship between computer-assisted language learning and the development of learner autonomy. It also studies whether strategy training facilitates the capacity to learn independently for college non-English majors. In addition, the paper demonstrates the pedagogical implications through an empirical study of learner training: 1) students become more autonomous and independent when they are equipped with a wide range of learning strategies for different learning tasks; 2) learners' metacognitive strategies are important in regulating and managing their learning process; 3) the improvement of learners' receptive(listening, reading) and productive (speaking, writing)competence is correlated with strategies-based instruction.The thesis concludes that the development of learner autonomy can be fostered by strategy training and computer-assisted language learning. And this ability is what every learner needs for their lifelong learning.