A Study On The Relationship Between Reflective Learning Strategy And Student Autonomy In College English Learning

Learner autonomy (LA) has aroused great attention in the field of applied linguistics since it was first formally put forward by Henri Holec in 1981. Learner autonomy is a kind of ability that may be acquired and fostered through certain strategy training, so a large number of studies on autonomous learner training spring up in LA research. As for reflection, most studies focus on teacher's reflection of teaching, but in fact, it is an essential part of learning ability on the part of students and an important way of promoting this ability, which has received attention since 1990s. There are some studies on the reflection of learner autonomy, but most of them are written by foreign researchers. The domestic research on it is rarely spotted, especially the empirical study on Chinese students.The present study focuses on a teaching practice which is aimed at improving students'learning autonomy through their self-reflection. The participants in this study are 30 third-year non-English major college students in TaiYuan who begin to prepare for the entrance examination of postgraduate in 2011. The instruction lasted for 12 weeks. A questionnaire about learning autonomy was distributed to them before and after instruction to find out if there is a significant change in learner autonomy. The reflective writing contains two parts. Both students'and teacher's reflection contribute to improving students'passion in learning so as to continue this reflection. Students finish their learning reflection every week according to the guided journal, and the monthly learning reflection in the light of an Independent Language Learning Reflective Questionnaire is used to carry out the peer-evaluation once a month. An interview was administrated to some of the students after the posttest of the questionnaire for a further investigation into the change of their autonomy in English learning. Results of the present study showed us a clear picture that 12 weeks instruction where reflective learning strategy is trained among 30 students really had a positive effect on students'learning autonomy. There was a statistically significant difference in students'overall autonomous level before and after the instruction. And comparing the two questionnaires before and after the instruction, the author also found from the change of their choices for the same question that the students who has no or less autonomy in learning before the instruction apparently become more autonomous after the instruction, while the students who has relatively high autonomy before the training instruction did not have a greater change after the instruction. Meanwhile, the two reflective activities, which were selected into this study, did have a positive effect on students'ability to monitor their learning process. The students have more awareness of their learning process and through reflection they begin to learn the way to manage their learning process. Yet, because of the limitation of the study time and subject, it is necessary to do a long-term and comprehensive research and study. That means, in the future research, researchers should do a long-term similar study among different subjects. And from the peer-evaluation activity, the students were stimulated to communicate with each other, which greatly promoted their passion and interest of English learning, so more attention should be paid to this activity. It was suggested that teachers should flexibly apply reflective learning strategy among students during their teaching.