An Investigation On College Students’ Capacity Of Autonomous English Learning In Web-based Environment

College English Curriculum Requirements (for Trial Implementation) has started anew round of College English teaching reform. As a new teaching philosophy,autonomous learning has become the mainstream of the reform. In response to theappeal of the Requirements, Web-based autonomous English learning environment hasbeen created in many colleges and universities to encourage students’ autonomous andindividualized learning. At the same time, the rapid development of computer andnetwork bring the new challenge and opportunity for College English teaching andlearning. Cultivating the ability of web-based autonomous English learning is becomingone of the most important tasks in the College English teaching reform. Therefore, thepresent study on autonomous learning capacities of non-English majors underweb-based environment has the practical significance.This research sets out to investigate the level of non-English majors’ autonomy aswell as find out what the role of teachers and what the expectations of students in theirteachers. Based on exploring students’ autonomous learning of English and identifyingtheir problems of autonomy, an exploration on how to develop learners’ autonomy ofEnglish learning in the new environment is made.119first-year non-English majorswho are the users of the lab for independent learning in Sichuan International StudiesUniversity participated in this research. All of them were required to finish thequestionnaire, which covers six areas: learning motivation, learning content, learningstrategy, learning plan, learning evaluation and learning environment. The data wereanalyzed by SPSS, and all the results were presented in tables. Furthermore, in order toget further information about students’ autonomous learning, interviews were carriedout among4students after the questionnaire.Results from the research indicate that the overall degree of non-English majors’autonomy of English learning at a low level. Most of the subjects obviously rely on teachers and they are expecting help or instructions from the teachers. The learningmaterials in the lab for independent learning are not affluent enough and need to berenovated timely. The students are lack of capacity to employ learning strategies andsome of them have misunderstandings on language learning.Based on the findings of the study, five suggestions are given to college Englishteaching and learning:(1) Enhancing students’ awareness of web-based autonomouslearning;(2) Cultivating learning strategy to improve the efficiency of autonomouslearning;(3) Renovating technology circumstances;(4) Creating a cooperative andinteractive learning environment;(5) More concern for learners’ affective factors.