English Learners' Attitudes And Behaviors For Autonomous Language Learning: An Investigation Of Tertiary Students In A Chinese University

The concern with teaching and learning has shifted from the teachers'teaching to the students'learning. Inherent in the shift of focus, there is a tendency to emphasize autonomous learning in which students are supposed to take more responsibilities in foreign language classroom. Therefore, today's education, including English teaching and learning, must pay attention to the cultivation and enhancement of learners'autonomous learning ability. On the basis of two fundamental theories: humanism, and self-regulated learning theory, the researcher conducted a survey study of 291 tertiary students'attitudes and behaviors for autonomous English learning.All the participants were chosen from the first-year and second-year undergraduates in Jiangxi Normal University. The study was carried out through a questionnaire designed by Victoria Chan, Mary Spratt and Gillian Humphreys (2002) and semi-structured interviews. The questionnaire comprises 52 items to be answered using a Likert scale. It is divided into four main sections requiring the subjects to report on: (a) their perceptions of the English teacher's responsibilities and their own in English language learning; (b) their perceptions of their decision-making abilities; (c) their motivation to study English; (d) how often they carried out different autonomous activities in and outside class. The aim of the study is to investigate students'views of their responsibilities and decision-making abilities in learning English, their motivation level and actual language learning activities inside and outside the classroom, with a view to gauging their readiness for autonomous learning. This study is both qualitative and quantitative in nature and the quantitative data are analyzed using SPSS. With the data-analysis and comparison of the statistical findings, the researcher comes to the following conclusions:Firstly, the students in this study generally show a positive attitude towards autonomous language learning and are willing to take responsibility for their learning. However, a large proportion of students demonstrate a high degree of teacher dependence. Secondly, the results show that the students realize that decision-making abilities have a great impact on the development and promotion of autonomous English learning, and believe that they can define their own learning objectives. But most of them seem uncertain about how to achieve the objectives and whether they could achieve or not even when they made a decision to do. The result showed that the students seemed to be lack of confidence and readiness for autonomous learning. Thirdly, they have strong motivation for English learning. Finally, they have realized the importance of learning strategies, but they seem to demonstrate the tendency of"high hopes combined with poor action", and also the actual activities in their language learning are far from enough.Based on the above findings, the study has offered some implications to promote the learners'autonomous language learning, first, it is important to raise learners'awareness of their own autonomous English learning (AEL) situation; second, it is necessary to set up learners'self-confidence; third, we should also construct and enhance learners'metacognitive knowledge; Fourthly, it is the high time to change teacher's attitudes and expand teacher's role. Anyway, it is hoped that these implications can guide Chinese teachers of English toward a better understanding of their students, thus finding a proper and more effective way to teach students of different English levels.