| College English has always been one of the most important subjects in higher education in China. Though great changes and achievements have been made in response to the requirements of educational reform, the current state of college English learning seems not so optimistic; there are a number of major problems in college English teaching and learning context. Indeed, in order to help learners cope effectively with the challenges of today's rapidly changing world, the development of the skills of learning how to learn is more important than the mere transmission of English knowledge. For this reason, the aim of fostering autonomy in language learning is employed for English learners to develop their language competence to meet the needs of lifelong education. Sharing this world-wide vision, the newly-revised Requirements for College English Teaching in 2007 requires cultivating students'comprehensive competence, especially the ability of listening and speaking should be emphasized in college English teaching, meanwhile enhancing their autonomous learning ability, so that they can communicate effectively in both oral and written English in their future jobs or social occasions.Based on the researches in fields such as psychology, cognitive psychology, sociology, linguistics and others, the two new trends in applied linguistics, cooperative learning and autonomous learning, originated and developed from the communicative approach of language teaching. For today's students, autonomous learning is the basic demand. The other more important qualities for students are the awareness of cooperation and the ability to cooperate with others. The task of cultivating students'English autonomous competence by using effective teaching strategies in the Chinese learning context has become an urgent research project for language teachers and educators.Consequently, based on the theories of autonomous learning and cooperative learning, the author of this research put forward a research program to investigate the feasibilities of cooperative learning when it was applied to promote non-English majors'English learning proficiency and enhance their autonomous learning competence in a cooperative learning environment.In this research, there were 120 non-English majors from two classes majoring in Bio-engineering and Sociology in Jilin Agricultural University, serving as the experimental group and the control group respectively. The research adapted both quantitative and qualitative designs. During the one-term empirical study, the instruments such as tests, questionnaires, classroom observation and interview were implemented in making the empirical study more persuasive and meaningful. Meanwhile, to make the comparison between the experimental and control groups more clearly and accurately, SPSS software and Excel2003 were adopted in the statistical analysis after the data collection.Compared with the traditional teaching approach, cooperative learning applied in this research has been proven to be more feasible and effective to develop the students to become autonomous learners in the following ways:(1) The overall language proficiency of all the subjects in the experimental group has been promoted, including the promotion of the overall academic achievements in the posttest, especially in the aspects of reading, listening and speaking proficiency.(2) By the comparison of all the subjects, the experimental group's overall English learning autonomous learning competence has been greatly enhanced. In the cooperative relaxed learning context, students'learning attitudes have changed a lot; English learning interests and motivation are inspired including the gaining of self-confidence and self-actualization; they become more independent learners who are responsible for their learning in being aware of the importance of setting learning goal, employing learning strategies, sharing the learning sources and materials, and evaluating their English learning to each other.To sum up, the result of this research is far from conclusive due to different subjective and objective factors and further explorations are needed. Though, the author hopes that this research could inspire some new thoughts and bring contributions to cooperative learning and autonomous learning theory and practice in college English teaching.
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