| In response to College English Curriculum Requirements, many colleges in China built up a web-based autonomous English listening learning (WAELL) system. However, the new system hasn't been as effective as it was expected in several years' practice. Learners' low autonomy and many teachers' misunderstanding about WAELL led to the low efficiency of this new model. But WAELL has become an irreversible trend in the information age. How to make it function more effectively in promoting learner autonomy has become a goal of many educational reformers. This research attempted to exert teacher role based on learners' problems and needs in their WAELL to enhance learners' autonomous learning ability, and consequently improve the efficiency of the new learning model.The research questions are: (1) What problems do learners come across in their WAELL? And what kind of help do they need? (2) What roles does the English teacher need to play and how does he/she play them? (3) Are these roles performed according to learners' problems and needs effective in promoting learners' autonomous learning ability? (4) How do learners view the teacher role in their WAELL?The research lasted one year with 69 freshmen from two English classes of Level one, Grade 2008, in Dalian University of Technology. At the beginning, they were surveyed with a questionnaire on their autonomous listening learning ability. During the research, learners in the experimental class were required to write learning journals about their WAELL and hand in weekly. Then the researcher wrote responses in their journals to offer them help based on the problems and needs presented. At the end, all the learning journals were collected, learners were resurveyed with the same questionnaire, and 20 randomly selected subjects from the experimental class were interviewed with questions focusing on the researcher's roles. Qualitative analysis was done on the learning journals by summarizing and sorting, and SPSS was employed to analyze the questionnaire data quantitatively by making comparisons between the control class and the experimental class and comparisons in the two classes respectively. Interview data were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively.The results of these analyses show that the equipment problems, the operating problems, the problems of setting goals and making plans, lack of confidence and interest, incapability of carrying out self-monitoring and self-evaluating and weakness in using learning strategies and selecting materials were big obstacles in learners' WAELL; that based on the learners' problems and needs, the researcher mainly played the roles of coordinator, supervisor, guide, counselor, strategy trainer, information provider, motivator, and evaluator; that these roles greatly promoted the learners' autonomous learning ability; and that many learners held positive views towards the various roles the researcher had played in their WAELL.These findings offer some realistic implications in carrying out the WAELL model: regarding learners' low autonomous learning ability, English teachers need to adjust their traditional roles to provide professional and psychological supports to learners to promote their autonomous learning ability. |
