Cultivating Students’ Reflective Learning Ability In The Self-directed English Learning Course

Self-directed learning recently has got more and more attention and many vocational colleges have provided the Self-directed English Learning Course (SELC) based on web. But unfortunately, due to the lack of effective learning strategies and self-learning motivation, the development of this kind of autonomous course is in a bad situation. For most of vocational colleges, these autonomous courses "are just the laissez-faire courses due to the lack of teachers’reasonable guidance. Therefore, the author believes that it is necessary to instruct students to use some effective learning strategies to enhance their autonomous awareness and then to improve their English proficiency.The learning without students’self-plan, self-observation, self-assessment, self-regulation and self-encouragement is not autonomous learning. As one of the important aspects as well as approaches to autonomy, reflection might be the effective strategy in the SELC. The author proposes four learning principles to cultivate students’ reflective learning ability and takes specific measures according to these principles. At last, the author tries to present a reflective learning model in SELC.In order to test the positive effect of the reflective learning model, this research applies a pretest-posttest design which lasts12weeks. The participants are77sophomores of Class1and Class2from the Mechanical Engineering Department in Wuhan Polytechnics. This research is an experimental study which involves quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis. Reflective learning (after the instruction under the reflective learning model for12weeks) and regular learning (without any instruction in class) will be used to observe the effect of the reflective learning strategies. Software SPSS will be used to do the statistical analysis and Paired-sampled T-test is the specific statistical method to process the data. The qualitative analysis will go with the analysis of the peer-evaluation forms and self-evaluation forms.The major findings are on the basis of the analysis of the data collected from the participants’tests and questionnaires. First, the reflective learning model propounded by the author has a positive effect on the cultivation of students’reflective abilities. Second, reflective learning model can improve the students’autonomy. Third, the reflective learning model can enhance the students’ English proficiency.