Fostering Learner Autonomy In Web-Based College English Teaching

College English Curriculum Requirements (for Trial Implimentation) has started a new round of College English teaching reform and autonomous learning, as a new teaching philosophy, has become the mainstream of the reform. In response to the appeal of the Requirements, Web-based College English teaching and learning environment has been created in many colleges and universities to encourage students' individualized and autonomous learning. No doubt, these efforts and practice have contributed a great deal to China's College English teaching, but some problems arise at the same time. This research believes that Chinese students' weak autonomous learning ability has been one of the major causes, for modern college students havebeen accustomed to passive learning --the unitary teacher-centered pattern oflanguage teaching, so they lack the independent learning style and necessary self-management learning ability for autonomous learning. The researcher tries to foster learner autonomy by means of metacognitive strategies training, that is, metacognitive strategies training for freshmen because she believes that the success in domestic Web-based College English teaching is to a large degree determined by the fact that the learner has already possessed some skills and qualities associated with autonomy.This research was carried out among the first-year non-English majors in East China Jiaotong University, in which sixty-five intermediate-proficiency students (Class B in Grade2006) were given one-term metacognitive strategies training. The researcher wants to see if the training is helpful in fostering learner autonomy, improving students' English learning achievements and helping students adapt to the new learning environment by comparing these students (the experimental group) with other intermediate-proficiency students in Class B (the control group), high-proficiency students in Class A, and low-proficiency students in Class C. Data in the experiment were collected through questionnaires, interviews, observation and some relevant tests. By means of SPSS software, the researcher made an analysis of the data and obtained the following findings: (1) metacognitive strategies training is helpful to improve students' language learning achievement; (2) metacognitive strategies training helps the first-year students adapt to the Web-based College English teaching and learning environment; (3) girls are more autonomous than boys and the training is effective in fostering learner autonomy, especially helpful to boys. Besides, the researcher found that in the new teaching environment teachers should value traditional classroom teaching, which is helpful in enhancing students' satisfaction degree with the Web-based College English teaching.These findings illustrate that it is quite necessary to provide students' with the skills and strategies directly to do self-access learning from the very beginning in the Web-based English teaching environment. Meanwhile, the limitation of the metacognitive strategies training shows that this training is only the first step in the process of fostering learner autonomy in the new Web-based autonomous learning environment.