Factors Affecting Chinese College Students' Autonomous Learning: A Model Testing With Structural Equation Modeling

Since the 1970s, the researched of autonomy have attracted much attention of language researchers. Autonomous learning has become an important topic in the educational and psychological field. However, learner autonomy also feels the effects from other factors at the same time, and conversely it also exerts an impact on those factors. The present study attempts at this hot topic with a focus on the effects of factors on autonomous learning, and on this basis an autonomous learning model constructed with those factors will be built.The instruments employed in the present study are two sorts of questionnaires investigating college students'autonomous learning and the confirmative factors assumed to have an influence on it. Participants are a sample of 150 students for a pilot study to test the validity and reliability of the instruments and another sample of 524 students for the formal analyses.In the pilot study, exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were conducted to examine the construct validity of each scale of the questionnaires. Based on the results and the reliability of the revised scales, modification was made relatively. The subsequent analyses involved Pearson Correlations that aimed at finding which factors significantly correlated with autonomous learning. Then those reasonable correlated variables were selected and classified. At last, the final chosen variables would be prepared for the autonomous learning model testing in the next phase. Simultaneously, the final autonomous learning model would be formed.Major findings of the present study are: 1) Among the five variables of intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, self-efficacy, mastery goal orientation, performance goal orientation, two distinguish themselves as factors that have a direct positive impact on students'autonomous learning. They are: mastery goal orientation, self-efficacy. Two distinguish themselves as factors affecting autonomous learning negatively. They are: extrinsic motivation and performance goal orientation. Autonomous learning has a direct positive effect on intrinsic motivation. 2) Self-efficacy possesses a positive predictive power to mastery goal orientation and performance goal orientation and a non-significant impact on extrinsic motivation.The findings demonstrated in the final model of the predictive degree and direct power of those factors on Chinese college students'autonomous learning and the causal relationships between those factors, extending evidence on the affecting factors of learner autonomy in Chinese EFL learning context and indicating a direction to the fostering of Chinese college students'autonomous English learning.