Effects Of Web-Based Autonomous Learning On College Students’Learning Of English Chunks

As an important aspect of language learning, lexical chunks learning has been paid more and more attention to in recent years. Its vital roles and great functions in language learning are recognized and supported by many scholars and researchers. According to the research, lexical learning can not only improve the learners’ speaking and writing skills in a short time, but can also make their output more fluent and more natural. Besides, lexical chunks are helpful to overcome the negative influences from the first language on the second language acquisition. The College English Curriculum Requirements published in2007points out clearly that college English teaching should aim at improving the learners’ communicative skills, making them able to communicate with others fluently and naturally. The learning of lexical chunks fits in with the new requirements. However, in the current English teaching situation in China, students’ enrollment is expanding while teaching resources are limited. The teacher has been overloaded. It is not reasonable to burden them. The Requirements also attach great emphasis on the students’ autonomous learning ability with the help of the advantages of information technologies. By using the Internet, the learners can learn the chunks by themselves outside the class. In such a way, the learners’English proficiency can be improved without burdening the teachers.For five weeks, this research was conducted in Central South University with70freshmen from four classes under the charge of the same English teacher. The participants were divided into two groups,35students in each group. And all the target chunks were chosen from the textbook they were using, the New Horizon College English for Reading and Writing (Book2,2nd edition).The data were derived from three lexical chunks tests, questionnaires and interviews and were analyzed by SPSS16.0. The main questions we explored in this research are:(1) Can web-based autonomous learning effectively influence college students’ learning of the receptive knowledge and productive knowledge of English lexical chunks?(2) Is this influence durable?(3) What are their perceptions towards learning lexical chunks in web-based autonomous learning environment?After data analysis, we found that students in experimental groups did a better job in grasping the productive knowledge of the lexical chunks and in the retention of the chunks. But as for the receptive knowledge, they did not surpass the control group. And they retained chunks better in the web-based autonomous learning environment. What’s more, nearly all of them held positive attitudes towards the web-based autonomous learning of lexical chunks. However, they were confronted with many problems in the process of learning, which due to their bad vocabulary habit and low autonomous learning ability. Based on the results of the research, implications for college teachers and learners are proposed.