| While education is a long-term social cause, learning is a lifelong personalprocess. The future society will be one of continuous learning, one that requireslifelong education, constant self-improvement and ever-refining survival adaptability.Since lifelong education requires cultivating learner autonomy in students, moderneducation has been aiming its goals at fostering the students’ autonomous learningand comprehensive capacity, College English Teaching（CET）is no exception.However, currently, the first move for the transition from “test-oriented education†to“quality education†and the best possible solution to the many bottle-neck problems ofcurrent CET in Chinese universities have to be an updated conception of education,functional teaching mechanism and teaching modes, and a refined learner autonomyin students. And the objectives of learner-autonomy cultivation are to usher studentsto consider and emphasize the various factors in their learning process, to find theappropriate learning strategies that best suit their individual learning peculiarities andlearning environment, and to enhance their learning achievements and theirself-management of learning process.Drawn on three learning theories, Cognitive Theory, Constructive Theory andHumanist Theory, this thesis is meant for two purposes, i.e., to discuss strategies tocultivate learner autonomy in students and to seek solutions to the “lack ofconstruction†in CET so as to nurture self-teaching capacity in students and guaranteea sustainable development in their language acquisition. Specifically speaking, theformer purpose seeks to foster in the students learning spontaneity, inner cognition,learning initiative, meta-cognitive strategies, creative thinking and innovative learning,to encourage the application of motivation-stimulating strategies to the students’self-teaching, and to analyze the teachers’ roles in the cultivation of learner autonomyand the effects of teaching strategies in CET; while the latter purpose of the thesis isrooted in the Humanist educational conception, original teaching models and soundfunctional mechanism fit for learner autonomy incubation.Humanist teaching theories, teaching methods and teaching modes emphasize thesubjectivity, autonomous learning and innovative thinking of the students and stress customized teaching suitable for individual peculiarities and differentiae. Their noveleducational teaching conception and diverse teaching methods secure thestudent-centered teaching modes under the teachers’ guidance, allow students toparticipate in the teaching process in a harmonious and two-way learning atmosphere,and push the students’ learning motivation and learning autonomy to the utmostpossible edge. As a result, the students actually dominate their own learning processand achieve their own learning goals via independent analyzing, questioning,exploring, practicing and creating, which neatly accords with the criteria set inCollege English Curriculum Requirements.Self-teaching enables the students to break free from the traditional passivity inlearning and enjoy a comparatively free and relaxed learning atmosphere. The futureCET teaching modes call for more freedom for the students to suit their individualneeds, spur their learning incentive, nurture their learning autonomy and enhance theirlearning efficiency.Constructivism contends that learning is not mere transmission of knowledgefrom the teachers to the students, but the construction of the ever-rearranging innerknowledge system of individual students, which is confirmed by modern psychology.Therefore, Constructive Learning Theory endeavors to assist the students to constructtheir existent language knowledge into a meaning system, to revalue and recode theirfreshly-obtained information, and to update their current knowledge system so it canaccommodate the new information. In other words, the process of construction andreconstruction of the students’ knowledge system will result in an adapted, moretolerable new meaning system in the students. Hence, Constructivism expresslydemonstrates to the students how information is processed, how meaning isconstructed, how conceptions are fashioned, and how ideal learning environment isconstituted in their learning process.Cognitive Learning Theory sees learning as accumulative, constructive andgoal-oriented. This theory believes that the source of knowledge is neither the subject(the learner) nor the object (the learning environment) of learning, but a complex ofboth. The learners have to learn via comprehending a new phenomenon and itsrelationship with the others. Namely, they have to process the new information and associate it with other information to understand it. Hence, active learning isgoal-oriented and can not be achieved before the clearly-set learning goals are. Andlearning goals, in turn, are shaped by the practical tasks in the learning process,therefore having to do with the interaction between the students and teachers, thelearning objects and learning environment. During the ever-changing learning process,the students set themselves clear goals, strive to achieve these goals by completingvarious tasks in various ways, and then evaluate their progress gained in the goalpursuing.In the teaching modes for autonomous learning, teachers, like students, playdifferent roles from their traditional ones. They are mainly guides, goal setters,resources providers, learning promoters, learner assistants and evaluators of learningachievements. Their designs of teaching styles and teaching contents make great anddirect differences in how well the students benefit from various learning resources intheir autonomous learning. This thesis holds that teachers should recruit diversemethods and resources to provoke the students’ inner learning motivation, nurturetheir meta-cognitive strategies and its application, enhance their self-monitoring andself-rating power；that they should design diverse learning channels, advocatecollaborative learning and duly evaluate the students’ learning performance andfeedbacks. Only in so doing will the teachers be able to waken the students’ cognitiveinitiative, spur their learning and thinking innovation, and eventually plant in thempowerful learning autonomy.To sum up, in order to cultivate and improve the students’ learning autonomy,teachers should emphasize Humanist teaching, utilize various learning strategies,teaching theories and teaching strategies to usher the students to better construct themeaning system of their old and new knowledge, to learn how to learn effectively, tofind and create meanings of knowledge for themselves, and to finally acquire alifelong learning capacity and secure its sustainable development. |
