An Empirical Study Of The Scaffolding Instruction On Non-English Majors’ Autonomy In Listening Learning

Learner autonomy is not only a kind of basic ability for human beings but also ahot topic in foreign language education. The cultivation of learner autonomy isregarded as one of the most important goals for language teaching. Xu Jinfen(2013,01) pointed out that although there were amounts of studies about learnerautonomy in English, the research contents needed to be further refined. Autonomy inlistening, speaking, reading and writing could be studied further.Listening is an important source of information as well as the foundation oflanguage learning and communication activities. Listening teaching is also animportant part of foreign language teaching. However, there are still some limitationsin current college English listening teaching, especially for non-English majors. Theyare short of learner autonomy and good listening habits. In this way, the improvementof listening comprehension becomes a big problem for students to learn Englishproductively. Therefore, it is necessary to solve these problems in classroom, and thecultivation of autonomy in listening learning should be noted. Actually, since the endof2003, The Ministry of Education has started a pilot project related to the reform ofcollege English teaching to develop college students’ autonomy, and180colleges anduniversities have participated in the project. The “College English CurriculumRequirements” also suggests improving college students’ autonomy to meet thedevelopment of our society and the need of international communication.Based on the background above, the student-centered scaffolding instruction isapplied to cultivate non-English majors’ autonomy in listening learning in class. Theauthor tries to study the following two questions:(1) Can the scaffolding instruction cultivate non-English majors’ autonomy inlistening learning? Is it more effective than traditional bottom-up method?(2) Can the application of scaffolding instruction improve non-English majors’listening achievements? According to these questions, the author conducted a teaching experiment lastingfor18weeks in her teaching practice classes (two classes of Grade2013in ShandongUniversity of Political Science and Law majoring in criminal justice). Before theexperiment, a questionnaire related to autonomy in listening learning and a listeningtest were handed out to test the participants’ autonomy in listening learning and theircurrent listening achievements. In addition, some students were randomly selected tobe interviewed for an in-depth understanding. During the experiment, scaffoldinginstruction was implemented in the experimental class while in the control class thetraditional listening teaching method was applied. By the end of the semester, thesame questionnaire was handed out to every participant and another English listeningtest was done in class. Besides, an interview learning about students’ autonomy inlistening learning and their attitudes toward scaffolding instruction was necessary.Excel2003and SPSS17.0were used to make quantitative analysis of the datacollected form the two questionnaires and two listening tests, and the results of theinterview were analyzed qualitatively. The major findings of the study are as follows:(1) Scaffolding instruction can cultivate non-English majors’ autonomy in listeninglearning, and it is more effective than traditional bottom-up teaching method.(2)Scaffolding instruction can improve non-English majors’ listening achievements.Based on the above results, the scaffolding instruction is feasible and effective incultivating college non-English majors’ autonomy in listening learning. Althoughthere are some limitations and shortcomings in this study, the author points out thedirections for further studies and proposes some practical suggestions for cultivatingautonomy in listening learning based on the conclusion of the results.