A Survey Research Of Non-English Majors' Out-of-Class Autonomous English Learning (AEL) Behaviors

Today,as people's awareness of lifelong learning has gradually increased,much more attention has been paid to the concept of autonomous learning than ever before in foreign language learning.Under the current context of college English education,learning in classroom is drawn much more attention,but less attention is on out-of-class autonomous learning.Thus,what students are going through outside their classroom needs to be taken into consideration.In other words,it is necessary to explore the students'out-of-class autonomous English learning(AEL)behaviors so that it can pave the way for further effective teaching and learning,particularly for lifelong learning.Throughout this thesis,there are three research questions being answered.The first research question is designed to explore what out-of-class autonomous English learning behaviors the students have in a university of western China by using Descriptive Statistics.The second one is to examine whether there is a significant difference in Gender,Ethnic Groups,Time Devotion,and Different Score Groups by using Independent Samples T-test and One-Way ANOVAs.The last one is to explore what the relationship between out-of-class autonomous English learning behaviors and national College English Test Band 4(CET-4)Scores is through Correlation Analysis.This thesis mainly via questionnaire and interview examined non-English majors' out-of-class autonomous English learning behaviors in this university,aiming to present a picture of undergraduates'autonomous learning behaviors for the improvement of college English teaching and learning.In this thesis,1,135 sophomore undergraduates from this university of Xinjiang,an ethnic minority region in China,were asked to report their actual out-of-class autonomous English learning behaviors.Then 22 sophomore undergraduates selected from High Score Group,Middle Score Group and Low Score Group,and 5 English teachers selected from different backgrounds who taught sophomore,were interviewed in the form of semi-structured interview for having a further and deep understanding about the students' out-of-class autonomous English learning behaviors.The findings revealed that undergraduate students in this university exhibited moderate frequency on autonomous English learning behaviors outside the classroom.To be more specific,there is a statistically significant difference between the female and the male students in their out-of-class autonomous English learning behaviors over four factors,with the female students tending to undertake more than the male.Besides,the difference is statistically significant among Ethnic Groups on out-of-class autonomous English learning(AEL)behaviors for Communicative Functions,especially with students of Uygur nationality and Kazak nationality who are more advantageous in out-of-class autonomous English learning(AEL)for Communicative Functions due to their own ethnic characteristics and language advantages in phonetic sounds and vocabularies.Moreover,there is a significant difference in Time Devotion outside the classroom owning to different autonomous learning ability the students have.But generally,the majority of(72.5%)students invest about 3 hours each week on out-of-class autonomous English learning behaviors.In Different Score Groups,there is also a significant difference,with High Score Group having more high frequency of undertaking out-of-class autonomous English learning behaviors than both Middle Score Group and Low Score Group.Furthermore,through qualitative data,High Score Group is better at utilizing metacognitive strategy,social strategy and affective strategy to tackle the difficulties in the process of engaging with out-of-class autonomous English learning behaviors than Low Score Group.However,Low Score Group rarely uses those strategies and is more likely to response the difficulties negatively and passively.Last but not least,students' English learning outcome is significantly correlated with their overall out-of-class autonomous English learning behaviors,while the degree of correlation is different over four factors.