Impacts Of Topic-Based Learning Guided By Exploratory Practice On College Students’ English Learner Autonomy:An Experimental Study

With the comprehensive promoting of higher education curriculum reform in our country, learner autonomy (LA) has been given more and more emphasis and attention by scholars and front-line teachers. Cultivating learner autonomy is consistent with the concept of learner center, and also an effective approach to change the traditional teaching model of teacher center. At present, the domestic latest versions of college, middle and primary school teaching syllabus all require clearly that students’learner autonomy should be fostered in teaching process.Topic-based learning (TL) is one of the main teaching methods used by RICH which is an educational reform group in Zhejiang Normal University. And making learners be the center, associating language form with language meaning as well as emphasizing language output are the three basic features of topic-based learning (Zheng,2002). Exploratory practice (EP) is an educational research approach, which is practitioner-oriented. EP concerns about the quality of classroom life and advocates the integrating of teaching with researching, which can make the relationship between teachers and students closer and finally get mutual development (Allwright,2003). When guided by EP, topic-based learning is endowed such characteristics as following, more flexible, more concerning about the quality of classroom life and combining the teaching activities with researching activities. This research attempts to apply topic-based learning guided by EP into college English teaching and try to explore the following two questions:1) Can topic-based learning guided by EP effectively promote college students’English learner autonomy? 2) If yes, what impacts does topic-based learning guided by EP exert on the four factors1 influencing college students’English learner autonomy?This research combines quantitative research methods with qualitative research methods. A teaching experiment on topic-based learning guided by EP was conducted in a fresh class of X university, which is made up of 48 students. This teaching practice lasts one-term(from March to July of 2015) and questionnaires are used to investigate whether the new teaching model can cultivate the students’ learner autonomy or not. Meanwhile, how the new teaching model affects students’ learner autonomy is also analyzed in this paper. The instruments of this study are questionnaires, interview and class observation. And SPSS 20.0 is used to deal with the relative data.Combining the quantitative data of questionnaire results with the qualitative data of interviews and classroom observations, two conclusions are drawn. On one hand, topic-based learning guided by EP can significantly promote college students’ English learning autonomy. Two questionnaires’ paired sample t-test results show that t values of the four factors of learner autonomy are all negative and P values are all 0.000 (< 0.05), which suggests the four factors influencing students’ learner autonomy are improved and make a significant difference after the new teaching model. And the results of interviews and classroom observations are consistent with this result. On the other hand, through the topic-based learning guided by EP, among the four factors of learner autonomy, the students’ self-efficacy (t= 9.048) and the learning strategies (t = 11.182) are improved more obviously while the learning motivation (t= 6.038) and meta-cognitive strategies (t= 8.586) are improved less. At the same time, the students’ integrative learning motivation is improved evidently while the students’ instrumental learning motivation has not been clearly changed. By analyzing the results of interviews and classroom observations, it is found that there are three reasons contributing to the changes above. First, topic-based learning under EP can stimulate students’ interest more. Second, topic-based learning under EP concerns more about the quality of classroom life, which makes classroom atmosphere more harmonious. Third, topic-based learning under EP pays more attention to the communication between teachers and students as well as the communication among students, which is advantageous for the mutual development of teachers and students.This research attempts to provide an effective method to cultivate college students’English autonomous learning ability. The result of the experiment shows topic-based learning guided by EP can effectively promote the college students’ English autonomous learning ability and thus offer an empirical reference to future research.