Learner Autonomy And Secondary Vocational Schools EFLT

Foreign language learning and teaching should be carried out according to thescientific theories and methods of language learning in order to improve theirefficiency. From the angles of psychology, pedagogy, social and cognitive science,this thesis systematically deals with the topic----autonomy in foreign languagelearning, which appears in our country in recent years and has aroused generalconcern. In this study, the researcher intends to explore the learners' view of languagelearning and tries to understand learners' language awareness and psychologicalreadiness towards learner autonomy. Besides, the reasons why the SVSS are lack oflearner autonomy are discussed. And possible ways to develop autonomy in SVScontext are put forward.The thesis is composed of five chapters and a brief conclusion. Chapter one is ageneral introduction and the last part is a conclusion to the whole thesis. Chapter twopresents an exploration of the concepts and theories related to autonomy. Firstly,autonomy is defined as the extent to which learners demonstrate the ability to use aset of tactics taking control of their learning. The tactics include setting goals,choosing materials and tasks, planning practice opportunities and monitoring andevaluating progress. They are as follows:1. understanding the teaching target and teacher's requirement2. determining the learning objectives and setting out the learning plans3. implementing the learning strategies effectively4. monitoring the procedure of implementing the learning strategies5. implementing and monitoring the learned language knowledge6. evaluating what has been acquiredLearners display these tactics to varying degrees. Secondly, it outlines thecorrespondence between three versions of autonomy (technical, psychological,political) and three approaches to issues of knowledge and learning (positivism,constructivism and critical theory), which serves as the theoretical foundation for theexploration of learner autonomy. Lastly, it seeks to the relationship between autonomyand language learning concerned with culture, learning strategy and motivation theory.All these serve as a prelude for the coming profound exploration.And then it comes to the third chapter—an exploration of learner's state quotowards autonomy of SVSS, in which data were collected in the form of questionnaire.The participants were 55 senior students from Qingdao Economic Vocational School.The questionnaire sought primarily to the beliefs about variables implicated insuccessful SLA that are considered important by researchers interested in learnerautonomy. After the analysis of the data, we come to know that in SVS most of thesubjects' ability of learner autonomy is weak. They are not inclined to takeresponsibility for their learning actively. But it is encouraging that most of the learnershave strong sense of language awareness. In addition, the strategies singled out forinvestigation in the questionnaire represent important knowledge and behavior forlearners who wish to assume responsibility for aspects of their language learning.However, the two strategies----about how to check one's own work and how tomeasure one's own progress, were the most limited in percentage of agreement amongall the strategies, which related to the key metacognitive strategies in languagelearning: monitoring and evaluating. Therefore, teachers need to allocate time andattention to raise awareness of monitoring and evaluating strategies, as well as toprovide learners with opportunities to practise using these metacognitive strategies.Chapter four presents some main reasons that result in the weakness of learnerautonomy in SVSS. Firstly, it points out that learned helplessness is one of the keyreasons. Because of lack of motivation and learner strategies, SVSS have such viewthat he\she is incapable of learning a foreign language. Secondly, it makes it clear thatteachers' attitude influences students' behavior subtly. It includes two parts---teachersfavor highs and teachers avoid lows. Thirdly, learner autonomy is not exercised withinthe context of passive interdependence. Influenced by passive learning atmosphereand learning support, SVSS may be deeply inimical to the development of autonomy.However, implementing learner autonomy in SVS is not impossible. We still haveways to develop learner autonomy in SVS.Then the thesis comes to chapter five, which is devoted to the discussion ofeffective ways to develop autonomy among SVSS. It argues that strategy training canhelp improve learner autonomy. The major findings of the study indicate thatmonitoring and evaluating strategies are the most limited in the percentage ofagreement among the autonomy – favoring strategies, so it proposes to developlearner autonomy by formative assessment. Moreover, cooperative learning is also aneffective way to develop learner autonomy because it is more learner-centered andencourages student participation in English class. A non-threatening and democraticorganization and management of a class can contribute to the creation of a classroomenvironment that promotes autonomous learning, in which students and teachers canshare the responsibility in the control of their environments and participants can beencouraged to analyze, to plan and to evaluate their learning.It is hoped that the study will benefit teachers in SVS in terms of developing learnerautonomy, thus sparking more interest in research on this aspect.