Web-based Autonomous Learning And College English Class Teaching Reform

With the increase of interaction among nations, people have gradually realized the importance of foreign language as a tool for global communication. The traditional teaching mode has been proved to be hard to meet the growing needs of people. Accordingly, there has been a steady interest in shifting the focus of foreign language teaching from teacher-centeredness to learner-centeredness. Learner autonomy has become a hot topic in the educational circles and it also becomes a new trend of foreign language teaching. What is more, the Ministry of Education issued a new document in 2004 setting new curriculum requirements on College English. It highlights the importance of enhancing learner autonomy with the help of multimedia to adapt students to the needs of the college English teaching reform. Hence, Dalian Fisheries University carried out the college English class teaching reform, which is based on the Internet, by way of conducting autonomous learning environment, in an attempt to increase the teaching quality.The subjects in this research are Grade B students of the first year. They are non-English major students from Dalian Fisheries University. Two English tests (pre- and post- test) are designed to test the English proficiency of the subjects and also to test whether there is improvement made after two different teaching approaches are adopted for a term. A questionnaire is also designed to investigate the attitudinal differences between the subjects in the experimental group and control class. Besides, an interview with teachers is also conducted to probe into teachers'attitude about the new approach and whether the new approach conforms to new curriculum requirements on College English. The data are analyzed mainly through SPSS software (version 12.0). After both quantitative and qualitative analyses of the data, the researcher yields the following research findings:1. In general, there is a significant difference between the students of the experimental and control classes in their overall ability, especially in terms of listening and reading ability, but writing ability of the experimental class is not enhanced.2. Questionnaire findings reveal that there is a significant attitudinal difference between the subjects of the two classes. Subjects in the experimental class tend to think that web-based autonomous learning does not mean less need of the teachers'guidance. Instead, the teachers'guidance and supervision should be strengthened in order to cope with the emergent questions encountered by the students in the process of their autonomous learning.3. Through the interview with the teachers, the teachers show their preference to the new teaching mode. The teachers also hold that the teaching mode conforms to the college English class teaching reform.In the end, the researcher discusses pedagogical implications yielded from the above findings, and limitations of the present study.