An Investigation Of College Students’ Web-based Autonomous Learning In Spoken English

Since the research focus in second language acquisition area has turned from "how to teach" to "how to learn", autonomous learning has attracted widespread attention among researchers. "College English Curriculum Requirements" in 2007 underlines the cultivation of college students’ autonomous learning and put the students’listening and speaking ability in a prominent position. Thus, in recent years, the study in English autonomous learning and the study of spoken English in China has become a hit. However, most of the studies take the autonomous learning of English as a whole, few studies focusing on the individual language skills such as listening and speaking. Besides, the existing studies tend to approach this issue from teaching perspective, less from learners’ perspective. With the popularization of the network in computer, iPod and mobile phones est., the groups of network autonomous learning in spoken English increasing, should receive the attention of research.The purpose of this study was to investigate the present situation of oral English network autonomous learning of non-English Major students. By analyzing the present situation of students’network autonomous learning in oral English, the author put forward the corresponding optimizational strategies, in the hope of providing some references for future network autonomous oral learners and sharing some enlightenment for the improvement in the teaching guidance model for autonomous learning. The subjects of this study are from non-English major freshmen in the Inner Mongolia Normal University. The key 200 subjects investigated, as constant spoken English autonomous learners, were selected from 310 freshmen. Having attended College English classes for a semester, the subjects are familiar with web-based oral English autonomous learning after class, which is in line with the requirements of this research. But this study involves only the students’autonomous study after class, not including the web-based learning in English class.The investigation methods were adopted to complete the research. The questionnaires and interviews were the main investigation tools. The questionnaire paper is divided into three parts.The first part indented to eliminate the students who never learn oral English, the second part was to select web-based oral English autonomous learners and the third part is the core of this investigation the study plans, including the control of the learning process and the self-feedback and self-assessment, autonomous e-learning in oral English, the specific learning motivation, their reorganization for web-based learning and the analysis on pros and cons of network autonomous learning. The result of interviews are in line with the questionnaire.The investigation results indicate that the present situation of oral English autonomous learning for non-English major students in Inner Mongolia Normal University is not optimistic. Specifically, they have positive attitude in network autonomous learning of spoken English. Their purpose of learning is to improve their oral English ability, but their practical integrated ability of network autonomous learning is relatively weak and individual differences are large. The subjects think the advantages of the network speaking autonomous learning are plenty while the disadvantages are obvious. Based on the results and discussion, the author proposed five aspects of optimizational strategies:enhance college students’motivation for oral English, improve their oral English network autonomous learning ability, explore free network learning resources of oral English, update the English class teaching ideas and diversify evaluation means. At the end of the paper, the deficiencies of the study and suggestions for future research are pointed out.