A Study Of The Correlation Between Internet Self-efficacy And English Autonomous Learning Competence Of Non-English-Major Graduate Students

With the arrival of the Internet era,the learning style of learners has changed dramatically and Internet learning is becoming more and more popular.Teacher or school is no longer the only source for students to obtain knowledge anymore.Therefore,the competence of learning autonomously and effectively has become an essential part of learners’ comprehensive qualities.However,students may encounter anxiety or difficulty during Internet learning process,so that the effectiveness and results of Internet learning will be greatly reduced or influenced.Internet learning self-efficacy and autonomous learning competence are both important factors that contribute to the Internet learning effectiveness.Graduate students are supposed to have basic academic ability to search and collect learning information by the Internet.Studies on the correlation between Internet self-efficacy(ISE)and English autonomous learning competence(EALC)of non-English-major graduate students will contribute to provide insight into the general situation of the ISE and EALC of non-English-major graduate students and also help to improve ISE and EALC of non-English-major graduate students.But up to now,few researches in this field have taken graduate students as their subjects.Given all this,quantitative research method is adopted in the study to explore the correlation between the ISE and EALC of non-English-major graduate students.The participants involved in this study are 240 non-English-major graduate students from Shandong Normal University and Shandong Agricultural University.The following three questions are to be addressed:(1)What is the general situation of the non-English-major graduate students’ Internet Self-efficacy? Whether gender,major and degree exert influence on their Internet self-efficacy.(2)What is the general situation of the non-English-major graduate students’ English autonomous learning competence? Whether gender,major and degree exert influence on their English autonomous learning competence.(3)Is there any correlation between the Internet Self-efficacy and Englishautonomous learning competence of the non-English-major graduate students? If so,to what extent the Internet self-efficacy influences English autonomous learning competence.SPSS 22.0 was applied to analyze the data collected from the Non-English-major Graduate Students’ English Autonomous Learning Competence Questionnaire and Non-English-major Graduate Students’ Internet Self-efficacy Questionnaire.Results and major findings based on data analysis can be summarized as follows:The general situation of the non-English-major graduate students’ ISE is above the intermediate level.Gender and degree exert significant influence on students’ Internet self-efficacy.The general situation of non-English-major graduate students’ EALC is at medium level.Though male students perform a little better than female students,the difference between the male and female is not significant.Besides,it is proved in the present study that major do not exert influence on EALC.However,PhD students are proved to perform significantly better than master students in all dimensions of EALC.ISE is correlated with EALC significantly and positively.ISE is one of the contributing factors of EALC but it only influences a little part of it.On the basis of the research results,some suggestions are put forward to promote the Internet self-efficacy and autonomous learning competence.Finally,some limitations of the study and suggestions for the future study are put forward.