On Cultivating Non-English Majors’ Autonomy In EFL Teaching And Learning

Western learners began to advocate autonomous learning from the 1960s. In the1970s, autonomous learning came into the field of language learning. In 1981, HenriHolec published Autonomy and Foreign Language Learning, which became themilestone of the study of autonomous learning. From then on, studies on autonomyhave flourished, and autonomous learning has become a hot topic. Many linguistswrite articles and books to express their own ideas from different perspectives, suchas the theoretical backgrounds or the definitions of autonomous learning, which lay asolid foundation for the development of linguistics.From the late 1980s, Chinese scholars began to study autonomy, trying to put itinto Chinese foreign language teaching context, especially English teaching context.Teacher-centered teaching style has come to be replaced by the student-centeredteaching mode. And teachers have been transferring their roles from the“knowledgeimparters”to“the study helpers”who not only help students to grasp practicalknowledge but also provide them with kinds of learning strategies to promote theirautonomous learning ability, which has long been one of the teaching goals in China.In these recent ten years, some of the Chinese researchers put their stress on theapplication of new teaching modes and the transformation of the teachers’roles.While another indispensable factor—learning materials or textbooks, has long beenneglected. Textbook is one of the learning materials, and it plays an important role inEFL teaching and learning of China. It is the key point to the application of theteaching syllabus and the main part of teaching activities and learning contents.Learning materials and textbooks should be attached great importance to. Butnowadays, there are few researches being conducted on students’autonomouslearning from the material perspective, which hinders the efficiency of both teachingand learning.In order to find how the materials in EFL can promote the learner autonomy, theauthor evaluates one of the mostly adopted textbooks—NCE with the help of the theories of materials evaluation and autonomous learning. Preliminary and in-useevaluations as well as a detailed analysis on the results of the evaluations have beenconducted, with the purpose to find the ideal model textbook for cultivating collegestudents’English learning autonomy. Questionnaires and interviews are all conductedin order to make the study more convincing and to find out the needs of the bookusers and the problems of current textbook compilation.The result of the study can make the users know more about the evaluation andadoption of the textbook, thus effectively promoting the learners’autonomy. It mayalso give some advice to the compilers of the textbooks.