| For many years, traditional teacher-centered classroom teaching model has always been employed in college English teaching and makes college English teaching a time-consuming and energy-exhausting project which consists of many problems such as teacher-centered large classes, burdensome workload, painstaking explanation of new words and sentences. Under this teaching model, students are regarded as passive learners instead of positive constructivist of knowledge. When our college English education gets into trouble brought by traditional teacher-centered classroom teaching model, the creation of the theory of learner autonomy sheds light on the educational reform of college English and injects more vitality into the current college English education.In attempt to implement the new teaching mode, many network-based teaching systems have been developed and widely made use of in English teaching of many universities, and New Horizon College English Online designed and developed by "Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press" is just one of the typical representatives. In2009New Horizon College English Online was installed on Lan of Shenyang University of Chemical Technology. Since then this online autonomous learning system have been functioning as a new means of English learning for students as well as a new method of interaction between students and their English teachers.This thesis is a case study of online autonomous learning at the Shenyang University of Chemical Technology based on New Horizon College English Online. It begins with theoretical exploration of learner autonomy and online autonomous learning. Then it is followed by the detailed description of process of online autonomous learning there. Then four qualitative researches are carried out to explore the effect of online autonomous learning and the influential factors by means of analysis of the scores in four tests and the data got from two questionnaires.Detailed analysis of the data generates the following findings:Firstly, online autonomous learning proves to be more helpful and effective in promoting students’ academic achievement than traditional teaching and learning model to some extent, but not on a statistically significant level especially in a short period.Secondly, students of average level of English proficiency and female students tend to benefit most from online autonomous learning.Thirdly, online autonomous learning was perceived the most effective in improving students’ listening ability.Fourthly, online autonomous learning helps develop students’ autonomous learning beliefs, but it will still take more time for students to change from dependent learners to independent thinker and autonomous learners.Fifthly, three factors-the online learning system NHCEO, the students’ positive motive and attitude, and the teacher’s guidance are found to most facilitate online autonomous learning.Lastly, Three factors-poor online environment, imperfect functions of NHCEO and some students’ negative attitude and lack of necessary computer and Internet skills are found to most hinder online autonomous learning.In brief, in spite of some temporary difficulties and problems in conducting online autonomous learning, it is firmly believed to have a promising and bright future. Consequently, the author hopes this research will make a modest contribution to this goal. |
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