A Study Of College Students’ Learning Persistence In “New Perspective English Learning System”

With the development of information technology used in College English Teaching in China, more and more universities try to make full use of computer-assisted and online resources in helping students learn English. As a web-based course system for College English Teaching, New Perspective English Learning System(NPELS) produced by Shanghai Foreign Language Press has been widely used in most of Chinese universities and colleges since 2004. It is reported that there is a great advance of the system---NPELS for English learning and teaching. Because of that, it arouses scholars and researchers’ interest in doing researches on it. The issues that most of the research focus on are such as learning strategies, evaluating system, teachers’ role and students’ self-regulating in the employment of NPELS.This research attempts to observe college students’ English learning persistence based on the employment of New Perspective English Learning System(NPELS) in the framework of cognitive psychological theory. In the research, there are 976non-English major students and 15 English teachers in three universities in Yunnan Province being invited to participate in the investigation. The research questions the author intends to explore are:(1) What attitude do students and teachers have towards the web-based learning platform of NPELS?(2) What causes affect students’ learning persistence with this web-based course system?(3) What suggestions can be found in the research for English teaching and learning by using NPELS?The findings expected in the research are that:(1) Most teachers and students have positive attitudes to the learning platform of NPELS, and think it plays an important role in English teaching and learning.(2) Motivation, self-efficacy and learning context may be the three main factors affecting college students’ English learning persistence in the application of this web-based coursesystem.(3) Some suggestions may be found for teachers to promote college students’ English learning persistence on the platform of NPELS.This dissertation can be divided into 5 chapters. Chapter one gives a general background of the research. Chapter two presents a literature review of learning persistence study both at home and abroad. It also reviews some definitions and researches on motivation, self-efficacy and learning context. Methodology of the study is shown in Chapter three, and Chapter four reveals the research results and discussions, which is the main part of the dissertation. The last chapter concludes the research, and also provides the limitations of the study with some recommendations for further research.