| With the guiding concept of "personalized" and "leaner-center" popularized in college English teaching, the knowledge of students’learning style and individual differences turns out to be one of the basic qualities for teachers. Since art student are special group manifesting their typical properties in thoughts, mentality, personality and behavior, a conduction of autonomous learning based on students’unique learning style may be important. Researches on English autonomous learning focus on non-English major students, but few refer to art students. Since researches on the correlation between English learning style and autonomous learning are rare, the thesis aims at the correlation between English learning style and autonomous learning, purposing on exploring art students’learning styles and developing their autonomous learning.Quantitative collection has been conducted to investigate137art students’English learning style and autonomous learning from Guangxi Normal University. Linguistic Learning Styles Preference (LLSP) written by Oxford has employed in his research. Oxford’s analysis is more comprehensive with aspects from perceptual style, cognitive style to personality style. It can accurately and completely investigates art students’ language learning styles. The questions diagnose five dimensions of English learning style preference:visual learning style, auditory learning style, and kinesthetic learning style, extroverted and introverted learning style, analytic learning style and global learning style, intuitive learning style and concrete-sequential, open learning style and closure-oriented learning style. English Autonomous Learning Questionnaire developed by Xu Jinfen et al (2004) is used to investigate the autonomous learning of students. The questionnaire measures students’ability of identifying what has been taught in class; students’ability of formulating appropriate learning objective and plan; students’ability of selecting and implementing learning strategies; students’ability of monitoring the use of learning strategies; students’ability of monitoring and evaluating process of English learning. The last question aims to explore students’overall English learning autonomy.In order to verify the relationship between English learning styles and autonomous learning, the following questions are included in this study.1. What is the overall situation of art students’English learning styles?2. What is the overall situation of art students’English autonomous learning?3. Is there any correlation between English learning styles and autonomous learning ability own by students majoring in art? If yes, how are they related to each other? Findings of research are as follow:1. Art students tend to learn with a variety of learning styles rather than to focus only on one or two learning styles. All the mean scores of art students’learning styles are above3.0except open learning style (M=2.45).2. The autonomous learning ability of art students is at a medium level. The ability of setting English aims, monitoring the use of learning strategies, and implementing learning strategies need to be improved.3. There is no significant correlation between art students’learning style and autonomous learning. Due to the limited scale and number of the subjects, findings of the research may not be convincing enough. Although the outcomes imply that art students’learning styles have no correlation with their autonomous learning, the author puts forward some implications for developing art students’learning styles and autonomous learning on the basis of the findings made by the scholars.Based on the findings displayed above, the author puts forward some implications for developing art major students’autonomous learning according to their learning styles. Firstly, teachers should convert their role and match thier teaching with students’learning styles. Secondly, teachers can guide students to diversify their learning styles and making up their own weakness. For art students, an understanding of their own learning styles is critical. They should follow the guidance of teachers and expanding students’own learning styles. Thirdly, students autonomous learning can be improved by implementing English learning strategies and cultivating the ability of planning and monitoring. |
