Cultivation Of Students’ Autonomous Learning Abilities

In recent years, with the college enrollment expansion and the decrease ofcandidates, the quality of students is sliding in vocational colleges year by year. Andthe students’ education experience is diverse, including high school graduates, thecollege students from secondary specialized schools, technical schools and vocationalschools. They have great differences on Basic English, which bring a lot of pressureand difficulty to higher vocational English teaching. English is the public requiredcourse in higher vocational colleges, so the layered teaching is significant. The studyis carried on the English layered teaching of Liaoning agricultural college, namelyaccording to the examination grades are divided into three layers: layer A (outstandingin Basic English), layer B (normal in Basic English) and layer C (poor English); theresearch object belongs to layer B, the compared more number students, the total isone hundred students who come from the three different majors of LiaoningAgricultural College; they are during the fresh year. The survey instruments wereused questionnaires and interviews tracking, this questionnaire includes sixtyquestions which are related to three aspects: why students learn English, how to learnand what to learn. Then used the software SPSS19.0to conduct descriptive statisticalanalysis of the results of the survey, all the results are displayed graphically. Theauthor conducted interviews with some students after completion of the questionnaireand combined with many years of practice teaching on students ’observations, canmore in-deep understand the problems of the students. The survey results show thatstudents’ English learning ability is generally low, most of the students do not have astrong motivation to learn English, they cannot create chances to practice Englishwith others, they cannot use appropriate learning strategies, at the same time, theyalso do not have sufficient self-confidence and lack of experiences to control learningoutcomes and the self-awareness for the learning outcomes. In addition, learners ofdifferent majors, genders and English school ages, their autonomous learning are alittle bit different, due to the students coming from different places, their autonomouslearning also different. Through further discussion and analysis of results, this studydraw experiences for the future English Teaching and raised tentative proposals forthe problems which have appeared, such as:(i) Helping students develop a viablelearning objectives and learning programs to enhance students’ self-learning ability.(ii)Using effective teaching strategies to develop students’ self-learning ability.(Combining autonomous learning with the “contract system” task-based learning. Combining autonomous learning with cooperative learning. Combining autonomouslearning with inquiry-based learning.)(iii) Utilizing formative assessment to enhancestudents’ self-learning ability.The aim of this study is to explore the methods and ways to improve students’English autonomous learning ability, to cultivate the students’ lifelong independentlearning skill and ability, make it become lifelong learners in the future society andtalents of the sustainable development. To solve the problem of (i) the students arelack of learning motivation and doubts about their own abilities, their learningdisabilities, fear in mental state, to cultivate higher vocational college students’English autonomous learning consciousness;(ii) to further consolidate the layeredteaching achievements, promote layer B students’ autonomous learning ability.Main features:(i) the research content in depth was strengthened, and analysismore factors on the background of higher vocational college students’ learning habitwhich leads to learning efficiency is not high;(ii) the object of study covering thestudents in higher vocational college of agriculture, while previous studies focused onthe English major students and science students in higher vocational colleges, makeup for the deficiency research on agricultural college students;(iii) the ways andstrategies to cultivate students’ autonomous learning ability are more concrete, moretargeted, more practical and more practicable;(iv) the object of study is moreconforming to the actual change of the students, more timely.