An Empirical Study On Web-based Autonomous Learning In College English

This thesis reports on an empirical study of the learner autonomy in web-based environment, which is conducted with187non-English major students in Xuzhou Technology Institute in China. The thesis proceeds by giving a brief overview of previous researches on web-based instruction and learner autonomy at home and abroad, exploring humanistic theory, cognitive theory, meta-cognitive theory, constructivism, and social-cultural theory as the theoretical rationale for learner autonomy in web-based environment. The whole thesis revolves around three essential questions, namely,1. What is the current situation of autonomous learning ability under web-based instruction?2. What impact does web-based instruction have on learner autonomy?3. How can autonomous learning be fostered with the integration of web-based instruction into traditional classroom? The combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis is adopted to explore autonomous college English learning under web-based environment. To be more specific, the thesis depends on English proficiency test, questionnaire, interview and online discussion. On one hand, qualitative study is conducted based on the understanding of interviews and online discussion. On the other hand, the related data are analyzed with the help of SPSS16.0software. The findings are as follows:1. non-English college major’s autonomous learning capacity is low under web-based instruction at large.2. Although the students hold weak positive attitudes towards web-based autonomous English learning, they’ve displayed certain improvement in some web-based autonomous English learning behaviors such as goal-setting, learning strategy use, and evaluating their autonomous learning process.3. Based on the main findings, the effective measures to promote learner autonomy can be proposed as follows:creating favorable web-based learning environment, learning strategy training, providing teacher’s affective support, strengthening learning confidence, stimulating learning motivation, improving meta-cognitive ability, learners’ role changing and self-learning center improvement etc.