An Empirical Study Of College Students' English Autonomous Learning Ability And Achievement Goal Orientation

Achievement goal theory is an important social cognitive theory on motivation in psychology.Researchers mainly divide the achievement goal orientation into three major elements: the mastery goal orientation,the achievement approaching goal orientation,and the achievement avoidance goal orientation.Autonomous learning refers to that individuals take charge of their own learning,set learning objectives and plans based on their own characteristics and personal needs,adapt effective learning strategies,and monitor and evaluate the learning process.In recent years,autonomous learning has received widespread attention in the field of second language acquisition,and previous studies have shown that there was a certain correlation between the achievement goal orientation and English autonomous learning,but the related research of their predictive power among domestic non-English college students is still not enough and the results of studies see the inconsistency.The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between the achievement goal orientation and English autonomous learning ability among college students and provide suggestions for teachers to improve students' autonomous learning ability.Based on the research purposes,the specific questions are as follows:(1)what is the current situation of college students' English autonomous learning ability and achievement goal orientation? Which kind of dimension is dominant among students?Is there the difference among dimensions?(2)What is the relationship between the achievement goal orientation and English autonomous learning ability?(3)Does the achievement goal orientation have the predictive power over the English autonomous learning ability? 279 college students of first and second year from three different universities in Shanxi province were selected as participants.Two Likert Scales were employed,involving the “Achievement Goal Orientation Scale” and “College Students' English Autonomous Learning Ability Questionnaire”.With statistical software SPSS24.0,ANOVAS,correlation analysis and regression analysis were utilized for data analysis.Major findings of this research are as follows:(1)the achievement goal orientation of college students is at the middle level,the mastery goal orientation is dominant and the differences between three dimensions are all significant;(2)the English autonomous learning ability achieves the modest level,Monitoring the Use of English LearningStrategies is dominant among students,and partial differences among five dimensions are significant;(3)there is a significant positive correlation between mastery goal orientation and English autonomous learning ability and its five dimensions,and the same correlation is seen between the performance approaching goal orientation and English autonomous learning ability and its five dimensions,but the performance avoidance goal orientation is negatively correlated with English autonomous learning ability and its five dimensions;(4)the mastery goal orientation has the obvious predictive power over the English autonomous learning ability and its five dimensions.On the basis of the achievement goal orientation and autonomous learning theory,the study provides related suggestions on how to cultivate students' achievement goal orientation and to improve the English autonomous learning ability.At the end,it points out limitations and advice about related research in the future.