Classroom-based Approach To Fostering Learner Autonomy

As early as two thousand years ago, our ancient educationalist Confucian has pointed out that "Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and you have fed him for a lifetime." His argument has, in fact, shown the importance of developing learner autonomy. With the change from teacher-centeredness to learner-centeredness in education, learner-centeredness and learner autonomy have become a hot issue in the research of foreign language education. Most of the researchers and educators in the field of ESL or EFL hold the same point of view that fostering learner autonomy is one of the most important goals in language teaching. Similarly, in China, the development of learner autonomy has received more and more attention. This paper takes its starting point from reviewing the literature at home and abroad on learner autonomy, and based on the literature review, the author puts forward the main idea of the thesis: fostering non-English majors' learner autonomy through classroom-based teaching.To define learner autonomy in classroom context is of vital importance in the present thesis. Autonomous learning has been misunderstood as "learning in isolation" or "self-instruction /learning without a teacher". Little (1995:178) argues that "It is sometimes thought that learner autonomy necessarily entails total independence ?of the teacher, of other learners and of formally approved curricula. But this is not so: total independence is not autonomy but autism." This argument gives corrective to that misunderstanding of learner autonomy. Based on a large body of the studies conducted by the experts in the field of learner autonomy research, the author defines learner autonomy in the ELT classroom context as "the learner's capacity to take control over his/her own English learning and become a responsible learner". This capacity is not innate but to be developed and the degrees and levels of the learners' learning autonomy may vary.According to Benson (2001:161) "this capacity is developed more effectively within the classroom, where learners are more readily able to collaborate with other learners and draw on the support of teachers, than outside it." Many other researchers, after conducting the experimental programs, also report that fostering learner autonomy from the classroom can produce positive results in the development of both autonomy and language learning. Therefore, the teacher has a very important role to play in the process of fostering learner autonomy.The focus of this paper is on illustrating how the author makes full use of the classroom time to integrate a variety of technique and classroom activities into the regular English language teaching process, so that the non-English majors' learner autonomy in English learning can be fostered. Based on the literature review, the author argues that learner autonomy involves motivation, learning strategies, cooperative learning, self-access to authentic material, all of which are key components of learner autonomy. After discussing the specific features of these four components and their respective relation with learner autonomy, the author shows in detail how each of the four components can be incorporated into the regular College English teaching practice with a number of theories concerned and practical examples of classroom activities.After illustrating the classroom-based approach to fostering learner autonomy through four sections above in this thesis, the author presents a research conducted to investigate the effectiveness of the classroom-base approach to fostering learner autonomy. The research lasted three terms, and the pre-course and post-course questionnaires used in the research consisted of five sections with the respective focus on students' perspectives on responsibility of learning, levels& feature of the students' motivation, strategies using, students' attitude towards cooperative learning, and students' self-access to authentic materials. In this research, the subjects' responses and Band-IV examination results of both the con...