Effect Of Teacher Support And Peer Support On Learner Autonomy Of English Majors

Learner autonomy has been gaining more and more attention in the research field of language teaching recent years.Many researchers investigated strategies to foster learner autonomy in English learning,and examined what affected learner autonomy.A majority of researches are conducted to study internal factors while external factors such as teacher support and peer support are insufficiently researched.In the present study,655 English major students responded to a survey and 10 were interviewed.Students' level of autonomy,namely,understanding of teaching objectives,setting of their own English learning goals as well as monitoring of their learning process,is studied and these respondents are found to be at an intermediate level of English learning autonomy.Another concentration of the study lies in whether teacher support and peer support contribute to English majors' autonomy in English learning.A questionnaire was delivered to this end and a correlation and a regression analysis indicate that students' learning autonomy correlates positively,to a significant degree,to all the examined types of external support(academic support from both teacher and peers,emotional support from teacher and peers).Whereas,not every type of support exerts significant influence on English majors' autonomy in English learning.The determining factors are found to be teacher's support both academically and emotionally as well as peer support academically.