A Study On The Effects Of English Tour Guide Internship On College Students’ English Autonomous Learning

In recent years, as the deeper development of the quality education in practical teaching, the study of learner autonomy has been regarded as a hot research topic in the educational field. Especially in college English teaching, autonomous learning capacity plays a more and more important role for the improvement of students’English comprehensive ability. College English Curriculum Requirements (try-out version) was promulgated in January2004by the ministry of education in our country, which explicitly pointed out that the autonomous learning capacity is one of the important goals for college English teaching. In2007, College English Curriculum Requirements had more specific requirements on autonomous learning. In addition, one of the important signs for the successful reform of English teaching is to individualize the student’s learning method and to develop student’s autonomous learning capacity. Because of the systematic characteristics of the teaching arrangement and the professional features in college teaching, college students have more flexible right of making options for class arrangement. Therefore, one of the problems in college education is that, how to urge students to make better use of their learning time and to maximize the effects on English learning. In this field, there has been a large number of domestic and foreign researchers have made great achievements.This thesis aims at studying the autonomous English learning capacity of college students who participated in this English tour guide internship, at the same time, during which the concept students held, the autonomous learning behavior formed and the change of their English learner autonomy are also involved. Thus, by studying this kind of social practical internship which related with the employment, it could find out what effects on the autonomous English learning capacity and the enhancement of their autonomous learning awareness.The study mainly adopts the research methods of questionnaire and observation. The subjects of the study are sixty participants in the English tour guide internship held by China Travel Service (Dalian Branch Company) collaborated with Liaoning Normal University. It applied three revised questionnaires as the instruments, which involved the following aspects: student’s English learning autonomy and attitude, student’s plan-making and implementation, the use of learning strategies, especially the use of oral English improvement strategies, self-assessment and self-adjustment. Based on the descriptive statistical analysis by SPSS and Microsoft Excel, it gets the final conclusion. Conclusion of the study shows that:1) Before taking part in the English tour guide internship, most subjects have a basic understanding and awareness of learner autonomy, but they still need the teacher’s guidance and help.2) Being English tour guides could improve English learner’s autonomous learning capacity.3) All the English tour guides after the internship activity demonstrate they recognize the importance of English autonomous learning. With the adjustment after seven months, their English autonomous learning capacity is enhanced from many perspectives, but the degree of improvement differs individually.