The Monitoring Of College English Self-regulated Learning Based On Network Environment From Theory To Practice

Since the time when Henry Holec first put forward the term ‘Autonomy’ in1980’s, self-regulated learning has been attracting the universal attention of scholarsboth at home and abroad, especially in foreign language academic field, scholarsbegan to transfer their academic research focus from the traditional study on howteachers teach to the study on how learners learn. Promoting learners’ ability ofself-regulated learning and life-long learning has been considered to be one of theimportant goals of modern education. Since1990’s, much of the foreign academicresearch achievement on self-regulated learning has been introduced into China,which has aroused the great attention and interest of Chinese scholars in educationaland foreign language teaching fields. With the launching of the quality projects ofChina’s higher education,“College English Curriculum Requirements”(CECR) waspublished in2004, which greatly promoted the practice of college English teachingreform all over China. And then self-regulated learning and autonomous learningability were put in the most important place. Just as the “CECR” stipulates,“One ofthe objectives of the reform of the teaching model is to promote the development ofindividualized study methods and the autonomous learning ability on the part ofstudents.” Hence, promoting learners’ autonomy has also been regarded as one of theobjectives of China’s college English teaching of the21st century.College English self-regulated learning based on network environment does notmean free study without any restraints or monitoring, but rather, refers to theself-directed, self-planned, self-motivated, and self-monitored English learning withthe active assistance and involvement of peers, teachers, the department of teachingadministration and network technology, etc. Based on the relevant theories onself-regulated learning both at home and abroad (such as the theory of CognitivePsychology, theory of Humanism, and the theory of Constructivism, etc.）, thisdissertation presents a case study of college English teaching reform of Hubei University of Economics (HBUE), which focuses on the monitoring of self-regulatedlearning. This study first analyzed the current situation and necessity of themonitoring on college English self-regulated learning based on network environmentin today’s China, then made a more intensified study on the monitoring objectives,monitoring types and principles, monitoring content and monitoring strategies of theself-regulated learning, and finally put forward a multi-element monitoring systemdesign for college English self-regulated learning, namely,“Five-Element-IntegratedMonitoring Module for Self-regulated Learning”. This module is composed of peers,teachers, teaching administration department and network technology, etc.To provethe validity of the multi-element integrated monitoring system, this study adoptedempirical research methods through questionnaires and several experiments to verifythe following hypothesis：positive correlations exist between:(1)English learners’achievement and the level of learners’ meta-cognitive monitoring;(2) theself-monitoring strategies of affective factors(such as motivation, attribution,self-efficacy, self-confidence, attitude, and anxiety, etc) and English learners’achievement;(3) the external-monitoring on College English self-regulated learning(the active assistance and involvement of teachers, peers, teaching administrationdepartment and network technology) and English learners’ achievement;(4) themonitoring on self-regulated English learning (including learner’s self-monitoring andteacher’s active involvement) and the English learners’ vocabulary learningachievement, reading level and listening level.Based on the findings of this study, the following conclusions can be drawn:Firstly, promoting learner’s autonomy is beneficial to the realization of collegeEnglish teaching objectives and to the promotion of learners’ life-long learning ability.Secondly,“autonomy” and “monitoring”do not contradict each other, on the contrary,they interact with and inter-depend on each other, constructing a kind of ecologicalunity from the perspective of ecology, where they can both develop forward in adynamic and harmonious way. Thirdly, active and suitable monitoring onself-regulated learning will improve college English learners’ achievement. Fourthly,an essential component of the college English teaching model is the construction of a multi-element integrated monitoring system for self-regulated learning based onnetwork environment. Fifthly, in order to improve the efficiency of college Englishself-regulated learning and to promote learner’s autonomy and the life-long learningability, strengthening the training of monitoring strategies for self-regulatedlearning is vital for English learners and English teachers as well.