A Study On Learner Autonomy Of Non-English Majors In College English Learning

With the globalization of economy and increasingly frequent international communication and cooperation, the 21 Century has witnessed the growing demands for the foreign language talents who are able to learn for their lifetime. In order to cultivate such kind of talents, it is necessary to foster learner autonomy in college English teaching and learning. As an important concept in the field of foreign language teaching and learning, learner autonomy reflects learners' attitudes and learning ability because learners play a key role in the learning process by taking more responsibilities for and exerting more control over their learning.A large body of researches has been conducted in the western countries to probe into the theoretical foundation of learner autonomy and how to foster learner autonomy from different perspectives. Since it was introduced to China in the late 1980s, learner autonomy has aroused great interest and extensive attention among Chinese educators and researchers. At present the relative researches are mostly limited to the introduction of the theories of learner autonomy, or discussions of the features of learner autonomy, significance and feasibility of promoting learner autonomy. There are few studies on the suggestions on promoting learner autonomy based on a survey of the current situation of learner autonomy at college. Thus, this paper attempts to bring forward some tentative suggestions to enhance learner autonomy on the basis of a survey on the situation of learner autonomy at college English learning.This thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter one mainly shed lights on the current situation of learner autonomy in college English learning, the research method and the structure of the paper. Chapter two presents an exploration of theoretical background related to learner autonomy. Chapter three introduces participants, research questions and methodology in which quantitative and qualitative data are collected in the form of questionnaire and interview. Chapter four focuses on the analysis of the data with the help of SPSS and some major findings. Chapter five comes up with some tentative suggestions to develop learner autonomy in the practice of teaching and learning in terms of the major findings from the survey. Chapter six serves as a conclusion including the restatements of the main contents of the paper, limitations of the present study and recommendations for future study.The author summarizes the results of the survey and reaches the conclusions as follows: First, the situation of learner autonomy is not satisfactory on the whole. Although students have possessed some basic awareness of autonomous learning, they, to some extent, lack autonomous actions and the fully use of learning strategies in practice. Secondly, girl students don't have significant superiority over boy students as far as beliefs about and motivation for learner autonomy are concerned, while girls generally outperform boys in the use of learning strategies.