Chapter One Introduction
1.1 The Background of the Study
With the acceleration of globalization and the rapid increase of knowledge and information, life-long learning has become a survival concept in 21st century. As an educational power, China also leads the trend of entering the life-long learning society. Social psychology research suggests that learner autonomy is a basic human need and it is an essential ability for life-long learning (Guan Yinfeng, 2017). Therefore, it is particularly urgent to foster people’s learner autonomy. Learner autonomy originally belonged to the category of educational philosophy, and was introduced into English teaching field by Holec in 1981. He defined learner autonomy as learner’s ability of taking responsibility for their own learning and this kind of ability could be fostered. Since then, learner autonomy has become a hot spot of foreign language education research. According to Xu Jinfen (2017,01), although there were a variety of researches of learner autonomy, the research content needed to be further refined, and it would be very meaningful to study learner autonomy in different aspects of English learning such as listening, speaking, reading and writing. According to Gardner & Miller (1999), there might be differences for one learner in different language learning skills since the degrees of learner autonomy were different. In conclusion, it is necessary to refine the study of learner autonomy to a certain aspect in English learning.
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1.2 The Purpose and Significance of the Study
In view of the above-mentioned background of the study, the author tries to find out a good way to foster college students’ autonomy in English listening in class. This is the main purpose of the study. The reason why the author chooses scaffolding instruction is that it is a student-centered teaching method and teachers in this teaching method play the role of instructors and supervisors. It is based on Vygotsky’s “social constructionism” theory and “the zone of proximal development” theory. The scaffoldings which should be established according to students’ zone of proximal development can lead the students’ intelligence from the current level to a higher level. Students can internalize these scaffoldings to guide their independent learning in the future. Therefore, the author attempts to use scaffolding instruction to cultivate college students’ autonomy in listening learning and through a teaching experiment to explore whether it is more effective than the traditional listening teaching in cultivating the students’ autonomy in listening learning. The ，英语论文网站，英语论文题目 |
