Empirical Study On Autonomous English Learning Of Non-English Majors

Task-based teaching and learning method is a meaning-oriented teaching andlearning method that takes the accomplishment of tasks as its objective, by which theteachers allocate or assign learning tasks in class to student for them to accomplish.Autonomous learning ability is the ability of students to be responsible for their ownstudy, an ability that can be acquired. The task-based teaching and learning methodcan improve the autonomous learning ability of students, while the increase in learnerautonomy can in turn promotes the implementation of task-based teaching andlearning method.The author conducts a research on the improvement of English learningautonomy of non-English majors through task-based teaching and learning methodwith regard to those pervasive issues among non-English majors as low learninginterest, weak learning motivation, and poor autonomous learning ability, with an aimto probe realistically into the attributions of task-based teaching and learning methodin stimulating the learning motivation of college students, changing their learningattitude and learning type and investigating its effectiveness on the learning autonomyskills. This paper employs three research methods: questionnaires、 teachers’observation and interview. It is aimed at, through questionnaires, discovering theinfluence of task-based teaching and learning method on the learning interest, attitude,motivation and their autonomous learning ability; and through interview and teachers’observation, learning about students’ changes of learning attitude and classroomperformance.During the experiment, the author collects and analyzes the experimental data anddiscusses the results of the analysis. The questionnaires are calculated throughSPSS17.0, and analyzed by means of Paired Samples Test. Through examination ofthe differences in Mean and Standard Deviation (S.D) before and after the experiment,the development of the task-based teaching and learning method on college students’ autonomous learning ability is analyzed; through frequency analysis of optionclassification, the learning types in the questionnaires are analyzed and discussed,attempting to find the influence of task-based teaching and learning method on thelearning types of college students; and through descriptive analysis of the interviewand teachers’ observation, the change of autonomous learning attitude and theperformance of the college students before and after the experiment is compared andanalyzed.The results of the research indicate that there are significant differences betweenthe learning autonomy before and after the experiment, which prove that task-basedteaching and learning method facilitates the learning autonomy of non-English majorsin such aspects stimulating the learning motivation of those college students, changetheir learning attitude and learning type, and improve their learning autonomy skills.It is concluded that the task-based teaching and learning method can successfullyimprove the autonomous learning ability of non-English majors. However, there aresome limitations of this paper due to the relevant documents and materials availableand the length of the paper. The author hopes that this paper can raise more concernand stimulate more research from teachers and researchers alike.