An Investigation On College English Learner Autonomy Of Ethnic Minority Students In Independent College

Over the last two decades, constant changes of foreign language learning have been taking place, of which the most important one is the transfer of teaching models from teacher-centered to student-centered. Academic researchers have been researching autonomous learning since1960s The concept of autonomous learning was first put forward by Holec. And Holec (1981) defines autonomous learning as "the ability to take responsible for own studies". Holec makes a further explanation of autonomous learning and points out the following responsibilities in autonomous learning:identifying learning targets, contents and speed, choosing learning strategies and skills, monitoring learning process and evaluating learning results. He believes that autonomous learning ability is not born but gained either by formal training or natural acquisition. Autonomous learning in China, emerging mainly from1980s, is mainly researches that introduce autonomous learning theories studied abroad. Afterwards, researchers make studies on the importance of autonomous learning in cultivating college students’autonomous learning, and most of them are about general students who are the representatives of college students. There are few studies on ethnic minority college students, especially the students in independent colleges. For the purpose of adapting to new trend of higher education development, the Ministry of Education sets the college English objection:"the aim of the college English teaching is to cultivate students’comprehensive application skills, especially listening, speaking, and to propel effective English communication in working environment and social contacting. At the same time, enhancing the ability of autonomous learning and cultural accomplishment are also the main purposes".The study aims to identify the current situation of English autonomous learning of non-English major ethnic minority students in independent colleges, the differences between freshmen and juniors and to find out effective ways to promote autonomous learning and to improve college English teaching in independent colleges. The key questions trying to deal with in this thesis are:what is the current situation of learner autonomy of non-English major ethnic minority students in independent colleges? Are there any differences between freshmen and juniors in their autonomous learning?In order to make a clear picture of the current situation of college English autonomous learning of ethnic minority students in independent colleges, one hundred questionnaires were distributed to seven non-English major departments in Yu Cai College, Southwest University. They are majoring in accounting, auto-service, law, medicine, computer, acting and math. Forty-four freshmen and fifty-six juniors were involved in this study. The instrument is an adapted questionnaire which involves six key factors affecting English autonomous learning. They are motivation, emotion, cognitive strategies, meta-cognitive strategies, communicative strategies and resource strategies. An in-depth interview is also used as an instrument in this study. There are20non-English major ethnic minority students who are involved in the interview. All answers made by students were processed by SPSS.The results show that the current situation of English autonomous learning of non-English major ethnic minority students in independent colleges is not good enough. The results also reveal that there are some differences between freshmen and juniors in terms of emotion, motivation and cognitive strategies. The results show that juniors are more autonomous than freshmen in meta-cognitive strategies, communicative strategies and resource strategies.Accordingly, the study offers some suggestions on promoting English autonomous learning to independent colleges. These suggestions are enhancing learners’motivation, transferring teachers’role, training English learning strategies and creating favorable English learning environment.An initial achievement has just been made in the study. But there are still many problems to be discussed to promote English autonomous learning in independent colleges. We do believe that this study can get more college teachers to realize the current situation of English autonomous learning in independent colleges so as to improve the efficiency of college English teaching.