The Development of Students Interest in Autonomy.doc

学生自主学习兴趣的发展the development of students interest in autonomycontentsabstract.1key words.1i. introduction.1ii. literature review.22.1 factors affecting learner autonomy.2 2.2 learners metacognitive knowledge or preconceived beliefs3iii. literature review.53.1 teachers and learners attitudes to learner autonomy in elf the method of survey53.2 within such a conception, learning is not simply a matter of rote memorization.7iv. conclusion.13references14the development of students interest in autonomy摘 要： 自主学习是近年来被广泛认可的一种教育理念，在英语语言教学中教师应从考虑英语语言学习者自主性的综合因素入手，设法培养增强学习者的学习的自主性。先介绍学习者自主性的重要性的重要性和学习者自主性的含义，接着详细地论述英语语言学习者自主性的各方面影响因素，包括学习环境，学习者对应验内学习的元知性，学习者的动机，学习者的社会与意识形态等文化背景，学习者的年龄，学习经验与信心，兴趣等因素。关键词：自主学习；语言学习；英语abstract: after giving brief account of the important of learner autonomy and its definition the writer suggest that the development in elt should be started by identifying and considering factors that may influence it. after reviewing the relevant literature both in china and in the world the writer found out the cluster of factors affecting the development of efl learner autonomy, including the learning environment, learners metacognitive knowledge, motivation, social and ideological culture and miscellaneous factor, such as learners ages, learning experiences and confidence and learners interests, etc. some strategies that are more or less based on the various factors are also recommended for the promotion of efl learner autonomy in this paper.key words: learning autonomy; language learning; englishi. introductionthe topics of autonomy and independence play an increasingly important role in language education. they raise issues such as learners responsibility for their own learning, and their right to determine the direction of their own learning, the skills which can be learned and applied in self-directed learning and capacity for independent learning and the extents to which this can be suppressed by institutional education. over the last 20 years, autonomy in language learning has been a topic of widespread discussion in the west. just as “communicative” and “authentic” were the buzzwords of the buzzwords in the 1990s (broady and kenning, 1996; little,1990). there has been more focus on learner training, learning to learn, learner development, and learning strategies in language courses and material design, and great progress has been made in the exploration and implementation of the concept of autonomy. however, much less concern has been shown and “little formal academic discussion about learner autonomy” (wu hongyun, 2001)has been held in china. autonomys learning is a relatively new concept to efl teachers and learns in china.although there has always been the chinese idea of zi xue (self-teaching), the idea is different from the concept of autonomous learning and is only peripheral in the chinese educational culture. confucius believed that it was important for students to learn of their own initiatives, as learning should be a process of independent exploring and understanding, but in reality greater importance has been attached to the teachers role as the judge. formal classroom learning is always favored over self-teaching. with many misconceptions, students in china are generally very teacher-dependent and lack the initiative to implement learning on their own. to many of them, the classroom is the only place where they can learn english. this situation should be changed in order for efl teaching at our schools and universities to be more effective and successful.ii. literature review2.1 factors affecting learner autonomyto help efl learner autonomy, we need to identify what can influence the acquisition of this learning attitude and approach. after reading and studying the literature on this subject the writer found out the cluster of factors that can exert influence on the development of learner autonomy. as relate to the learner himself, these factors can be intrinsic or extrinsic or both, and are more or less interrelated. as illustrated by victoria chan, in the highly competitive learning environment infested with exams the“didactic learning modes” with the teacher as its center are so prevalent that passive learning seems to be emphasized(chan, 2001). in such a learning environment the students are burdened with schoolwork while the teacher is in absolute control of the classroom and learning process, calling out his explicit orders for all the different learning activities, which seems to justify the remark that“the teacher is the main obstacle to autonomy” and that“if the teacher is removed, or she/he learns to create situations where students can learn independently, they will be forced to manage their learning” and“will be autonomous-as-learners”(wenden,1995). the assessment system designs and implements many school-based and pubic examinations which can only make students learn by rote, which in the words of victoria chan means“memorization and regurgitation of information. an adaptive strategy for dealing with assessment demand, particularly when studying in a second language”. metacognition is any knowledge or cognitive process that refers to, monitors or controls any aspect of cognition(moses baird, 2000). although is historical roots are deep, the study of metacogntion first achieved waived widespread prominence in the 1970s through the work of flavell(1979) and others(ibid). learners metacognnitove knowledge refers to learners beliefs about his cognitive processes, which, when applied to efl learning, mean students knowledge and conception of themselves language learners, of factors affecting language learning and of the nature of language learning and teaching. a number of researches on learners metacognitive knowledge have revealed that learners perceptions of language learning may have a significant influence on their learning outcomes.2.2 learners metacognitive knowledge or preconceived beliefs motivation may link to different types of autonomy(ecclestone,2002), but the relationship between autonomy controversial issue, the controversy being on whether its autonomy that enhances motivation or its motivation that produce autonomy. by making a survey of the relevant literature and meanwhile carrying out a large-scale study of hong kong tertiary students, mary spratt and her associates argue“motivation may lead to lead to autonomy or be a precede for it” (spratt, humhreys and chan, 2002), which is significant for the task of language learners training. as it indicates where teachers should choose to place their teaching priorities. in situations where learners resist autonomous practices or reject or avoid learning opportunities, teacher may encourage autonomy by developing students motivation to learn(ibid). in mainland china, language students motivation to learn has drawn close attention from many language researcher who argue that language teachers should pay great heed to the encouragement of the students motivation to learn and the promotion of their learner autonomy.the social and ideological cultural factor is closely related with the above-mentioned three, in may have some influence on them, which, nevertheless, remains“to be confirmed or disapproved by the test of reality”(littlewood,1990). from the perspective of anthropology, culture is commonly divided into three broad categories: material, social, and ideological, with social culture pertaining to peoples forms of social organizationhow people interact and organize themselves in groups and with ideological culture relating to what people think, value, believe, and hold as ideals and with material culture including products of human manufacture, such an technology. according to sperber(1996,cited in littlewood,1999), culture can be interpreted in term of different types of representation, such as those of ideas, attitudes, and proper ways of conduct. a small part of the multitudinous number of individual mental representations within any human group is conveyed overtly by means of artifacts and linguistics utterances etc.this situation should be changed in order for efl teaching at our schools and universities to be more effective and successful. in china, language teaching, especially teaching english as a foreign language (efl) is based on two fundamental approaches: “the first is the communicative approach with the principal requirement of learning languages for communication and in communication”(widdowson 1990), “the second proceeds from the ideas of humanistic, democratic pedagogy, placing learners and there learning into the focus of attention, instead of the teacher and the process of teaching. this approach has been called the learner-centered one in efl. its development has brought about the notion of learner autonomy in learning efl”(tatiana kara eva 2001: 87). as “learner autonomy is essentially amateur of the learners psychological reaction to the process and content of learning”(little 1990:7), it means giving learners an opportunity to select and implement appropriate learning strategies so as to teach themselves at their own pace. it also gives them an opportunity to play a considerable role in setting the goals of learning, in organizing the learning process, and fulfilling it. all in all, learning efl in considered being inefficient if it does not base itself on the learner-centered approaches and learner autonomy. but practical and successful implementation of these approaches in efl depends on teachers and learners attitudes to them. as regards english teaching and learning in china over a long period of time, learners are still used to relying on the absolute supremacy of the teacher in the learning process. similarly, teachers are reluctant to give up the teacher-dominated approach, because some of them are used to being the supreme authority in the classroom, and not letting their students share their teaching arrangements and methods. this traditional idea is so deeply rooted that even now some teachers and learners continue to maintain it in efl. thats why the introduction and implementation of learner autonomy meets so many obstacles. and learner autonomy undoubtedly cannot be used successfully unless teachers and learners have a positive attitude toward it. as for learner autonomy, it is without the best way to reach our educational goal. mcdevitt (1997:34) points out “the end product of education is an independent learner”, and that cultivating a learners independence or autonomy should be regarded as the end goal that teachers or educators try to pursuer”(li ming 1997:7).iii. literature review3.1 teachers and learners attitudes to learner autonomy in elfthe method of surveya survey was made through a multiple choice questionnaire (see appendix) among chinese teachers of english in high learning, non-english majors of undergraduates who use different textbook. the questionnaire comprises seven questions and served as the principal means for gathering the necessary data for this paper.in china, language teaching, especially teaching english as a foreign language (efl) is based on two fundamental approaches: “the first is the communicative approach with the principal requirement of learning languages for communication and in communication”(widdowson, 1990), “the second proceeds from the ideas of humanistic, democratic pedagogy, placing learners and their learning into the focus of attention, instead of the teacher and the process of teaching. this approach has been called the learner-centred one in efl. its development has brought about the notion of learner autonomy in learning efl”(tatiana karajeva, 2001: 87). as “learner autonomy is essentially another of the learners psychological reaction to the process and content of learning”(little, 1990:7), it means giving learners an opportuntity to select and implement appropriate learning strategies so as to teach themselves at their own pace. it also gives them an opportunity to play a considerable role in setting the goals of learning, in organizing the learning process, and fulfilling it. all in all, learning efl in considered to be inefficient if it does not base itself on the learner-centred approaches and learner autonomy. but practical and successful implementation of these approaches in efl depends on teachers and learners attitudes to them. as regards english teaching and learning in china over a long period of time, learners are still used to relying on the absolute supremacy of the teacher in the learning process. similarly, teachers are reluctant to give up the teacher-dominated approach, because some of them are used to being the supreme authority in the classrome , and not letting their students share their teaching arrangements and methods. this traditional idea is so deeply rooted that even now some teachers and learners continue to maintain it in efl. thats why the introduction and implementation of learner autonomy meets so many obstacles. and learner autonomy undoubtedly can not be used successfully unless teachers and learners have a positive attitude toward it. as for learner atonomy, it is without the best way to reach our educational goal. mcdevitt(1997:34) points out “the end product of education is an independent learner”, and that cultivating a learners independence or autonomy should be regarded as the end goal that teachers or educators try to pursur”(li ming,1997:7). how should we develop positive attitude toward learner autonomy, and change the traditional authoritarian role of teachers? we must contained three basically conditions. the attitude of the learner, the study ability and environment, for another word, lead to the study rational in the course. 1 hope students to set up a responsibility attitude. 2 develop the ability of the autonomy study 3 create an environment of the autonomy study. our university teaching english aim is development the ability to communicate the information, and master the method of the language, then becomes a independent language learner and user. which is the centre attitude the teachers or the students between the english major and the analyze from the teaching, teaching aims, teaching model. the relationship between the teachers and students, and develop the necessity, get the representative, and the efficacious feed back result. in english language teaching, the trenchers should consider the english language learners autonomy, try to develop strengthen learners autonomy. article describe the importance and the autonomy, and then discuss detailed english language learners autonomys influence in every parts. contains the study environment, the learners due to the original cognition and the learners motive, society, and consciousness, and other background, learners ages, study experience, and confidence, inters, and so on.factors affecting learner autonomyquestion 1(q1) concerns personals about the english textbooks they are using, in order to know whether the teaching materials are proper and can appeal to their interest.qiestion2(q2)concerns their individual teaching or learning purpose or the motivation of teaching/learning english. most of the questions are directly connected with the topic being discussed in this paper. for example,q3 what pattern do you prefer in your teaching/learning efl? and q5 how do you think the language should be taught? are designed to learner relationship do you think to be the most suitable in efl? and q6 what is your attitude to learner autonomy in teaching/learning efl? are intended to explore whether teachers and learners still hold the position of teachers supreme authority in teaching/learning process, or they have changed their attitudes to learner autonomy in efl teaching/learning. q7 what do you think of learner-centered training? is to find out what percentage of people think it very necessary in efl . the survey was conducted and completed in over april-may 2001 among 10 chinese teachers of english, and 61 students who use college english and 58 students who use new college english. both teachers and students are from shandong agricultural university.3.2 within such a conception, learning is not simply a matter of rote memorization.it is a constructive process that involves actively seeking meaning from (or even imposing meaning on) events”(candy, 1991: 271). such inventories characteristics evinced by the putative autonomous learner abound, and some would say that they amount to nothing more than a romantic ideal which does not square with reality. this stands to reason, for most of the characteristics imputed to the autonomous learner encapsulate a wide range of attributes not commonly associated with learners. for instance, benny (1976, cited in candy, 1991: 102) likens the autonomous learner to one w hose life has a consistency that derives from a coherent set of beliefs, values, and principles- and who engages in a still-continuing process of criticism and re-evaluation, while rousseau (1762 1911, cited in candy 1991: 102) regards the autonomous learner as someone who is obedient to a law that he prescribes to himself. within the context of education, though, there seem to be seven main attributes characterizing autonomous learners (see maggie 1978, cited in wended, 1998: 41-42): 1. autonomous learners have insights into their learning styles and strategies; 2. take an active approach to the learning task at hand; 3. are willing to take risks, i.e., to communicate in the target language at all costs; 4. are good guessers; 5. attend to form as well as to content, that i