A Study Of Improving Freshmen's Autonomy In English Learning In Transitional Stage

China's entering WTO arouses a worldwide cooperation and competition with the outside world in a greater scope, which ushers in the broad space for foreign language usage. All this challenges foreign language teaching and learning in colleges. In a presentation to UNESCO, Education Council of the 21st Century points out that the requirement of education is learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be, which can be summarized as follows: learners should be cultivated to know-how (how to learn by oneself or autonomous learning) and know-who (how to cooperate with others or cooperative learning) (1999). It contains two concepts: cultivating autonomy and cooperative learning. It is imperative for teachers to attach attention to fostering the learners'autonomy in order to enable them to conduct self-study in their future in accordance with the development of the times and society.It is estimated that there exists the considerable gap in English learning and teaching between universities and high schools. Particularly the autonomy of freshmen in English learning is weak and lacking in attention. With the reform of education in China, traditional English teaching and learning at university has begun developing a learner-centred and autonomy-focused orientation. Autonomy in learning is becoming the main trend. However students in the third senior high school are passive receivers of knowledge and they mainly learn through repetition,memorization and countless exercises. The process is determined, scheduled and evaluated by the teachers who are considered as an authority, a knowledge-giver. They have problems adapting to the requirements of college English teaching and learning due to their lack of instruction and strategies in autonomy. Furthermore, surveys show that they rarely receive teachers'attention and regular training of autonomy learning. They are in embarrassment when coping with the new study and life. This further holds back their development in the future.Therefore, it is urgent for teachers to explore the proper strategies and method to help freshmen in the transitional period. How to help them to form the belief and capability of autonomy seems an urgent and serious problem.Learner autonomy and autonomous learning have become a prominent topic in educational circles and a trend of foreign language teaching and research. The term"autonomy"in language learning was first put forward in 1981 by Henri Holec in his book Autonomy and Foreign Language Learning. He noted this term referred to"the ability to take charge of one's own learning". Many other researchers proposed different views about this definition and conducted many study and experiments on learner autonomy. In China, due to the short history of study on autonomy most study is limited within the introduction of theories and analysis, but lack of empirical research. College Curriculum Requirements (2004) points out that one of the aims in college is to cultivate students'autonomy in learning.This study intends to adopt empirical research mainly extracting some practical and effective methods and principles in Establishing Self-access ----From Theory to Practice (Gardner, D. & Miller, L. 2005). They are adopted for Chinese freshmen such as helping learners make analysis of their learning ability and English level, set self-study plans, cooperative learning in class and so on in order to cultivate the learners'beliefs about autonomy and help them develop autonomy methods in accordance with the requirements of the university. On the basis of social interactionism, cooperative learning is put forward as an effective way to promote freshmen's autonomy ability and views. It is found very practical in helping these students to remove the feeling of solitude in a new environment. And teachers can easily implement it in the classroom with principles fitting together for the purposeful communication. Freshmen can learn from each other in small-group interactions if their work is carefully detailed and assigned with specific information about the goal, the process, the timing, and the reporting of the results of their tasks. It could at most promote the process of communication and learning from each other without teachers or instructors. In this procedure, it is assumed to be helpful for them to form good habits of cooperation and convert their learning belief toward autonomy and to become more autonomous and less dependent on authority. Meanwhile they are gradually becoming accustomed to the college study in short time.Combining cooperative learning and the pilot investigations with many other theories in EL strategies and pedagogy in considerable materials about learning autonomy, this study discusses the effective principles and practical methods, which can be operated as generic teaching and learning mode in this period from both theory and empirical sides, such as English learning strategies, metacognition in linguistics, pedagogy and psycholinguisticsThere two main research (one focused on in-class study and the other was on after-class study) as well as four questionnaires. And the findings and statistical analysis of the scores in two tests reveal its practicability and validity.Besides, some negative elements were concluded and analyzed. Although there are some factors constraining the implementation of autonomy learning in the tertiary English language teaching in China, we have reasons to believe that as long as some feasible measures and strategies like cooperative learning are taken, and implementation of autonomy belief and learning are definitely carried out, continual exploring and experimenting research it will be of great benefit and significance for freshmen even all college students at different levels to become more successful autonomous learners.The dissertation consists of six chapters. Chapter One introduces the background and purpose of the research as well as its significance and necessity. Chapter Two deals with the current study, situations and limitations of autonomy in ET&L both in China and abroad. Chapter Three describes the theoretical base of the whole study. Chapter Four and Five discuss the interview and research. In Chapter Four, I represent the design of the research, including the description of the objectives of the research, participants, and instruments for data collection, methods and procedure which are explained in detail. Chapter Five collects data in three tests and analyzes them with software SPSS to further prove the CL is practical and effective in helping form autonomous beliefs and habit in transitional stage. Chapter Six is the conclusion part, summarizing the findings of the study as well as the limitations.The findings of the study suggest that freshmen are able to develop certain beliefs and a capacity for autonomy. I believe this is meaningful research which will assist the learners in adjusting to college English teaching and learning and becoming more successful autonomous learners.