Cultivation Of English Learner Autonomy In Vocational And Technical Colleges

This thesis is attempted to explore the cultivation of English learner autonomy for students from vocational and technical colleges by identifying their learner autonomy level, their expectation of teachers' role and their evaluation of teachers' teaching performance concerning cultivating learner autonomy. Students from vocational and technical colleges differ greatly in terms of learning situations, learning background or learning styles; for instance, they are generally low English achievers and many of them are low-motivated or less-confident in English learning. And to be specific to autonomous learning capability, they have not possessed such vital factors that feature the term learner autonomy as learning strategies, goals, plans and self-evaluation, which will greatly facilitate their English learning. A conclusion can be drawn from the above facts that they are lacking autonomous learning awareness and capability. Strategy employment, proper evaluation and strong motivation, etc. may strongly facilitate students' autonomous learning ability. But not everyone come to be born with the ability of being autonomous learner, and learner autonomy can be possibly obtained by systematic training and practice through the joint efforts of both teachers and students. The truth is vocational and technical college English teachers' impact on students' fully autonomous ability is undoubtedly tremendous, while their teaching performance is not as satisfactory as students expect. It follows that the development of learner autonomy entails not only students' efforts, but also new roles and new teaching styles in English teaching on the part of college English teachers.In the thesis, the term learner autonomy is explained in the first chapter including its research background and its different definitions. To base this thesis on a solid foundation, theories such as humanism psychology, constructivism and cooperative language learning are also introduced in the first chapter. The second chapter elaborates on the reasons that we have to cultivate learner autonomy in vocational and technical colleges, and three aspects are given in this chapter including the requirements of vocational and technical colleges' teaching syllabus, the goal of English teaching in vocational and technical colleges and the difficulties of English learning and teaching in vocational and technical colleges.A survey is conducted in a vocational and technical college: Qingdao Harbor College. The major findings of this thesis are mainly based on the questionnaire which is carefully designed with an intention to find out the major influential factors from both students' and teachers' angles in the learning process. With the major findings as clues, approaches to cultivating learner autonomy are brought forward accordingly in the last chapter.We find from the survey that most vocational and technical college students are weak in applying learning strategies, in avoiding negative affective factors and in learning through collaborative work with peers, etc. To change this situation, students should be highly motivated through various ways; most importantly, the instruction and the practical application of learning strategies are especially significant to facilitate autonomous ability. Cooperative language learning is also recommended to help students to become more independent of teachers in and out of classrooms in English learning process. At the same time, a profound change of teachers' roles and teaching styles is expected to create a more encouraging environment that can inspire students' potential as autonomous learners.