An Empirical Study On The Promotion Of English Learner Autonomy Through Portfolio

Ever since the early 70s, there has been a steady interest in changing the focus of foreign language teaching from teacher-centeredness to learner-centeredness. It is generally acknowledged that learners themselves should play an active role and take the responsibility in mastering a foreign language to improve learning efficiency. Consequently, learner autonomy , which refers to the willingness for and the ability of taking charge of one's own learning, has been a "buzzword" in foreign language teaching.A large body of research concerning learner autonomy has been carried out in the western countries, focusing not only on the rational of learner autonomy from pedagogical and philosophical point of view, but also on the means of facilitating the development of learner autonomy. In recent years, the study of learner autonomy has also received increasing attention from teachers and researchers in China, but most of the relevant studies in China are pure theoretical researches, the empirical researches are few, the empirical researches with portfolio integrated into college English teaching to promote learner autonomy are even rare. Portfolio as a tool of formative assessment has the function of helping learners plan, monitor and evaluate, which is in accordance with the connotation of learner autonomy-self-planning, self-monitoring and self-evaluating. Gardner and Miller (2002) once recommended learner portfolio as an ideal tool to foster learner autonomy. With an attempt to fill up such a research gap, this study sets out to promote learner autonomy with portfolio integrated into college English instruction. Based on the above reasons, the study has put forward three hypotheses:1. English learner autonomy can be enhanced through portfolio;2. Students' achievement can be improved through portfolio;3. Students' metacognitive level can be improved through portfolio.In order to test the above hypotheses, the author carried out aone-year experiment with portfolio integrated into college English instruction among 60 freshmen chosen by English scores of entrance test to university in Grade 2007 of a certain university with 30 students in the experimental class and 30 students in the control class, there was no significant difference between the two classes about the achievement. During this experiment, portfolio was integrated into the classroom teaching in the experimental class to record, reflect and monitor students' own learning process, while control class performed routine English teaching. In the experimental class, first of all, need analysis was carried out, then introduction about how to use portfolio was made, including its definition, objectives, guidelines and content. The students were required to annotate the work which would be put into portfolio, reflect their own progress, make presentations about their own portfolio and have portfolio conferences.Before and after the experiment, pretest and posttest on learner autonomy and metacognitive strategies were conducted in the experimental class and control class respectively. The data was keyed into SPSS to do descriptive statistics and paired-samples T test. The statistical result showed that there were not significant differences between the experimental class and the control class on language proficiency, metacognitive strategies and learner autonomy before the experiment (t<2.000;P>0.05). After one-year experiment with portfolio integrated into college English instruction in the experimental class, the results revealed that the students in the experimental class were obviously superior to the students in the control class on learner autonomy , language proficiency, and metacognitive strategies, there were significant differences between the experimental class and the control class in the above three aspects(t>2.000;P<0.05).Therefore , the experiment effectively improved students' English learner autonomy, language achievement and metacognitive strategies.The interview on the students in the experimental class confirmed that ninety one percent students believed that portfolio made them learn to reflect their own learning, that ninety three percent students considered that portfolio let them learn how to learn English according to their learning styles, that ninety-five percent of the students agreed or strongly agreed that the portfolio allowed them to choose what they like to read or listen to according to their personal interests and that ninety percent students thought that portfolio made them realize that they could learn anytime and anywhere, not just in the classroom. To sum up, 80% of these students wanted to continue using portfolios after the experiment.Therefore, the result of the experiment demonstrates that portfolio integrated into college English instruction can make students take more responsibility for their own learning, and the students can set their own learning goals according to their actual situation, arrange their own learning time, place and content, reflect their own learning and discover their own progress. Through the experiment, the students improve their level of English autonomy, language achievement and the level of metacognion. As a result, they become the real masters of English learning.