| As language teaching and learning theories develop, there appears a shift of language research focus from teachers to learners and from teaching to learning. It is now generally acknowledged that students themselves play a crucial role in successful learning. Thus, how to help students be more independent, autonomous and effective learners has become a hot topic in language teaching researches both at home and abroad. However, from a literature survey on autonomous learning studies, we can find there is a gap between the necessity for empirical studies and the research status in present China: most of the studies on autonomous learning conducted in China are theoretical and few are empirical; and there are even less studies touching upon the topic of fostering English majors’ learner autonomy with respect to English reading.Learning portfolio is confirmed by numerous studies as an effective way to enhance learning from various aspects, to develop learners’ multiple intelligence, and also proves to be effective in promoting learner autonomy. It can help learners to plan, monitor and assess their learning process and achievements--three processes that are in accordance with the three components in autonomous learning: self-planning, self-monitoring and self-evaluating.Based on the previous discussion, the author devised an experiment aimed to test the effectiveness of fostering English majors’ learner autonomy through the implementation of learning portfolio in their extensive reading after class. The study was conducted in two English major classes in Taishan University, consisting of60students totally and focused on the following research questions:(1). Whether or not reading portfolio can contribute to the promotion of students’ reading autonomy?(2). Whether or not reading portfolio can improve students’ reading proficiency in general?(3). Is there any correlation between students’ reading autonomy and reading proficiency?In this study, various types of instruments are used to collect sufficient qualitative and quantitative dada, including questionnaires, reading proficiency tests (taken from National English Contest for College Students Level B-Sample) and interview. The data was collected and analyzed with SPSS13.0. Independent samples T-test and paired samples T-test were employed to analyze the obtained data and correlation analysis between learners’ reading autonomy and reading proficiency was undertaken. The results from the interview were also transcribed to know more about students’ attitudes towards reading portfolio. Based on the data analysis and discussion, this paper tries to reveal several findings on the effects of reading portfolio on learners’ reading autonomy and reading proficiency.First, reading portfolio proves to be effective in fostering students’ reading autonomy. It helps to develop students’ positive attitude towards reading and enhance their reading motivation. Their abilities of planning, monitoring and evaluating learning are also improved.Second, reading portfolio shows its promise in improving students’ reading proficiency through the analysis from their achievements in the pre-reading test and post-reading test.Third, a significant correlation exists between students’ reading autonomy and their improvement in reading proficiency.The study drew the following pedagogical implications:First, learning portfolio-based teaching and learning can be applied to other language learning fields to foster learner autonomy. Both students and teachers should receive instruction about learning portfolio in order to help students become more autonomous learners. Second, teachers’ guidance and feedback are also necessary to achieve the objectives. Third, teachers should think of ways to cultivate students’ positive attitude towards learning and to inspire students’ motivation for autonomous learning. Last, teachers should pay attention to the development of students’ meta-cognitive ability through the training or instruction of meta-cognitive strategies. |
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