Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Background of the Present Study
In the 1970s, the focus of language teaching began to shift from studying how to teach to studying how to learn. In other words, the objects of English teaching in China is to develop students' ability to use English in all-round way, especially to enhance their ability to study independently and improve their cultural quality so as to meet the needs of China's social development and international exchanges. In the past decades, many scholars begin to pay attention to the research of autonomous learning and there are some researches as follows: Being autonomous in learning is important because the most efficient learners tend to be the ones who have developed a degree of autonomy (Little, 1990). Therefore, the present teaching tendency is expected to focus on how to motivate students towards autonomous learning. Henry Holec (1981) identifies that autonomy refers to "the ability of the learner to take charge ofhis own learning". And this ability is not innate but to be developed and the degrees and levels ofthe learners' learning autonomy may vary from person to person (Dickinson, 1992).
1.1本探讨的背景
在20世纪70年代，学习如何教语文教学的重点开始转向探讨如何学习。换句话说，中国英语教学的目的是，以发展学生的全面的方式使用英语的能力，尤其以提高他们到学习独立和提高自己的文化素质能力因此为满足中国社会发展的需要和国际交流。在过去的几十年里，许多学者开始注重自主学习的探讨，有如下一些探讨：自主学习是很重要的，因为最有效的学习者往往是那些已经开发出了一定程度的自治权（小，1990）。因此，当前的教学趋势预计将重点放在如何激发学生对自主学习。亨利霍勒克（1981）指出，自主权是指“学习者的能力，英语论文，英语论文范文，负责本自己的学习”。而这种能力不是与生俱来的，但要发展的程度和水平OFTHE学习者的学习自主性可能会有所不同，从人到人（狄金森，1992）。
1.1.1 Requirements of College English Curriculum
As to College English Curriculum Requirements, it is clearly pointed out that goals ofcollege English teaching should include promoting students' English integrate competence,fostering students' autonomous learning and enhancing students' cultural quality in order to meetthe requirements of our economic development and international communication.Besides, with great advocating of quality-oriented education and gradual rise inlearner-centered language teaching and lifelong education, more and more attention has beenpaid to the fulfillment of learners' potential over the learning process and fostering learnerautonomy. And it is obvious that education should also be aimed at developing learnerautonomy.
1.1.2 Implication of Previous Researcher in This Field
Just as the old Chinese saying goes, "give a man a fish and he eats for a day; teach a manhow to fish and he eats for a lifelong". A lot of papers at home and abroad have attached muchimportance to this point (Nunan, 1993). And English teachers are seen to play an important rolein facilitating learner autonomy in English teaching.It is little concerned with students' beliefs about teachers' roles in promoting learnerautonomy; to be exact, there is no empirical study about teachers' roles in developing learner autonomy from the students' angle. Besides, a lot of previous studies have demonstrated thatthere is always mismatch between learners' opinions or perceptions and experts' or teachers' interms of the same set of learning condition (Nunan, 1988).Thus, this study aims to report teachers' roles in developing learner autonomy from alearner perspective, which intends to gain a general picture of students' perceptions andexpectations about the role acted by college English teachers, solving the problems in fosteringlearner autonomy on
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