An Empirical Study On Autonomous Teaching Model Of College English For Art Students From The Perspective Of Constructivism

The concept of "learner autonomy" has attracted a widespread interest from the linguistic and educational circles ever since it was pioneered into education in the1980s by Henri Holec. In order to meet the needs of China’s social development and international exchange, Chinese Ministry of Education issued the new College English Curriculum Requirements in2007establishing the enhancement of college students’ability to study independently as one of the most important objectives of college English. It is also emphasized in the Requirements that colleges and universities should reshape the existing teacher-centered pattern of language teaching into new teaching models and "an important indicator of the successful reform of the teaching model is the development of individualized study methods and the autonomous learning ability on the part of students." However, as it turns out in reality, art students at college remain subjected to the English class dominated by traditional teaching model, which renders their autonomous learning ability far from satisfactory and makes it impossible for them to suit the needs of modern world. In addition, it has been discovered through literature search that few researches have ever been done so far concerning the autonomous learning of art majors in a comprehensive university. Therefore, this study attempts to construct an autonomous teaching model of college English for art students under the guidance of constructivism with a purpose of exploring the feasibility and essentiality of fostering their autonomous learning ability in the process of college English teaching.In order to find out what difference the autonomous teaching model would make to art students, an experiment was conducted in two classes from College of Arts, Northwest University. One is the experiment class and the other the control class. The former was taught under autonomous teaching model while the latter under the traditional model. After one semester of instruction, it was found that the experimental class’s autonomous learning ability and English scores were both improved significantly. This result shows that it is not only feasible but essential to develop the autonomous learning ability of art students in the process of college English teaching.