A Study Of Freshmen’s Autonomy In English Learning

The concept of Autonomous Learning was first put forward by Holec in1981. He defined autonomous learning as "the ability to take charge of one’s own learning". As the name suggests, the ability of autonomous learning advocates that students should be the master during the learning process. Autonomous learning requires students to learn actively according to the learning goals they set for themselves. Students also need to have proper learning plans and effective learning strategies, instead of relying on their teachers’request. According to the related researches at home and abroad, students’ ability of autonomous learning is closely related to their learning results. Students’ motivation, as well as their strategies adopted will lead to different learning results.This paper studies the following two questions according to the investigation of freshmen’s English autonomous learning:the factors affecting freshmen’s English autonomous learning and the strategies freshmen use during their English autonomous learning.The results of the study indicate that the76freshmen selected from Central China Normal University freshmen from different majors don’t have strong motivation for English autonomous learning. Besides, they have more or less experienced the impact of the transitional problems about the different learning environment and teaching patterns. They have got used to the traditional teacher-centered teaching model, which is different from the student-centered class in the college study. According to the survey, they think that the internal and external factors affecting their autonomous learning include their own learning aptitude, learning motivation, classmates or groups around them, the learning environment and teachers’teaching process. Students also adopt certain learning strategies to learn English autonomously, such as the cognitive strategies, meta-cognitive strategies and social or affective strategies. However, the statistics show that freshmen do not have clear and active sense to adopt suitable learning strategies. The implications of this survey is:1) freshmen need to develop the sense of English learner autonomy and try to adopt proper English learning strategies;2) schools should create more suitable environment for students’ autonomous learning;3) teachers should help learners strengthen the sense of making use of learning strategies and lead students to develop the ability of English autonomous learning.