翻译专业学生自主学习能力调查与分析以华南师范大学增城学院为例.doc

Abstract

Autonomous Learning was put forward by Bruner in the 1960s of the 20th century, and then many scholars did researches on it and showed great many of their standpoints and ways of expression. In the field of education, autonomous learning will play an important role in students` study. This study investigates and analyzes the condition of autonomous learning of the translation majors in Zengcheng College’s with the help of questionnaires. And then excel is used to evaluate the condition of autonomous learning.
Through the questionnaire investigation, we found many students tend to learn by rote, only some students can do it in their study subconsciously. The abilities of autonomous learning have to be improved. We hope that this study will shed some insights on themselves and activate autonomous learning on our school even all kinds of fields.
Key Words: Autonomous learning; self-efficacy; intrinsic value; self-regulation

摘 要

自主学习自从六十年代20世纪被Brunner提出后，国内外的许多学者对此做了许多相关的调查和研究，并且得出各自的观点和表达方式。在教育领域，自主学习性会起到很大作用。此论文以华南师范大学增城学院翻译专业学生当前的自主学习情况做了调查，然后通过Excel进行数据分析处理当前的自主学习情况。
通过问卷的分析，我们了解到增城学院的翻译专业的学生自主学习情况不太乐观，其中的自我效能感、内在价值信任感、策略的应用和自我调控能力都有待提高。有些人能够潜意识下建立自主学习系统，而有些人则比较散漫没有明确的目标。我们希望通过这样的调查和分析，为学生的自主学习提供有意义的见解，让更多学生懂得更多关注自身，然后规律、有方法地的学习。
关键词：自主学习；自我效能；内在价值信任度；自我调控

Contents

ABSTRACT I
摘要 II
1. INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 Significance of the study 1
1.2 Aims and objectives 1
1.3 Organization of the thesis 2
2. LITERATURE REVIEW 3
2.1 Autonomous learning 3
2.1.1 Definition of autonomous learning 3
2.1.2 The application of autonomous learning to English learning 3
2.1.3 The affecting factors of autonomous learning 3
2.2. Domestic and foreign studies on autonomous learning 4
2.2.1 Foreign studies on autonomous learning 4
2.2.2 Domestic studies on autonomous learning 4
3. METHODOLOGY 6
3.1 Research questions 6
3.2 Subjects 6
3.3 Research methods 6
4. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS OF THE QUESTIONNAIRE 7
4.1 The self-efficacy 7
4.2 The intrinsic value 7
4.3 The test anxiety 8
4.4 The cognitive strategies 8
4.5 The self-regulation 9
5. CONCLUSION 10
5.1 Major findings 10
5.2 Suggestions 10
REFERENCES 11
APPENDIX A 12
PART A 12
APPENDIX B 13
PART B 13
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 16

1. Introduction
1.1 Significance of the study
Since the 1950s of 20th century, autonomous learning became an important topic in the field of educational psychology. Every faction put out different researches and ideas on it from all kind of view. The concept of autonomous learning was quoted into Henri Holec`s project in the 1980s of the last century (Benson, 2005), and it was highly-spoken by all kinds of fields at home and abroad. Many services have been taken upon this concept, so as the same as in our country. In recent years, revolutions have been taken as the new courses struck, ways of teaching changed from teacher-centered to student-centered. All kinds of studies proved that students can do a great job while teachers focus more on students themselves rather than teaching itself (Zhan xiaohai，2004).
Nowadays, autonomous learning is of greater importance in our studies. As the saying of many scholars, teachers are the irreplaceable guiders, but autonomous learning can be taught anyway and then students can hold themselves from then on. Autonomous learning conformed to the improvement of foreign language education, and it is really necessary that student need it. As Boud (1988) said, as a method, autonomous learning makes it possible for students to response in class and makes them clear about their responsibilities in study.
Many studies showed that autonomous learning is a result of study which leads students to learning themselves after they learnt how to learn from their teachers, and students can easily hold themselves with it. Moreover, while students have showed the autonomous learning, the process of it can give it more power and help for them to seek greater progresses.
For this reason, we decided to carry out a study to investigate autonomous learning ability of translation majors in our school in an attempt to help them finding out their difficulties in study and to give them some advice on the effective strategies.
1.2 Aims and objectives
This study aims to find out the autonomous learning ability of translation majors. Generally, this study has the following three objectives: (1) to investigate the existing situation of autonomous learning in translation majors, (2) to draw useful enlightenment of autonomous learning for the major of translation.
This study attempts to answer the following three questions: (1) what is the existing situation of autonomous learning among translation major students? (2) what are the useful effects of autonomous learning? (3) what effective implications of autonomous learning can be drawn for translation majors?
During the procedure of the study, firstly, we made the questionnaires to investigate the existing situation of the use of autonomous learning among translation major students; then we strategied to arouse the students’ conscious awareness to use it in their studies. Before and after the experiment, the subjects were given questionnaire A and B, which were used to evaluate the condition of autonomous learning used in study.
1.3 Organization of the thesis
This thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter one serves as an overall introduction to the rationale and aims of the study. Chapter two is an overview of the theories and studies related to autonomous learning strategies. Chapter three describes the research methodology, including research questions, subjects, design, instruments, data collection and so forth. In Chapter four the results of the investigation and experiment will be presented and discussed objectively in detail. Finally, Chapter five is devoted to the conclusion in which we will show the major findings and implications of the study.

2. Literature Review
2.1 Autonomous learning
2.1.1 Definition of autonomous learning
The concept of autonomous learning was put forward firstly by Henri Holec (1981) in last century 1980s, and then there are many scholars at home and abroad take seriously of it and show all kinds of points of view. We can call it ‘Learner Autonomy’, ‘Autonomous learning’, Self-access" and so on.
According to P. Benson (2005), autonomy is about people taking more control over their lives individually and collectively over their learning in classrooms and outside them and autonomy in language learning about people taking more control over the purposes for which they learn languages and the ways in which they learn. Energetic learners said that autonomous learning is a kind of ability, which student can use it to control themselves (Bergen, 1990). Then Thomson (1996) made it as learning process when students learn by themselves without teachers and other instruments in a stipulated environment.
2.1.2 The application of autonomous learning to English learning
Autonomous learning is a process, with which students can make good use of the resources or make up their aims by themselves of under guiding of the teachers. During the time, they can choose the right method to learn and become active in their studies. As for teachers, autonomous learning can be used easier for student to do well in their study in the stipulated environment.
While autonomous learning is formed, students will be activated, and then better plants will be made, all works will be monitored and valuated. As better environment is formed, they can make a big progress in their studies by themselves.
As we all know, the traditional teaching method is the teacher-centered style, students take in knowledge passively. In fact they seldom have the chance to show their ideas. Under this kind of environment, student was limited and cannot do any thing without teachers. If we follow the concept of autonomous learning, things will change (Yang jie, 2006). Many studies approved that autonomous learning do help in our study indeed.
2.1.3 The affecting factors of autonomous learning
There are many factors that can affect autonomous learning, including internal and external reasons. Everyone reacts depends on all elements, such as places, times, environments and all things. The internal reason including: (1) Motivation, the desire and activate to learn: if they have the desire to learn, then generally, they always do well in this course. (2)Emotion, it causes nervous that affect learners` cognitive, which will make them out of attention. (3) Cognitive structure, it is the fixed content that learners can use it while it is fits to what they ready to learn.
The external reasons including: (1)the pressure of testing, what you do good or bad will reflect from the score you get in you exam paper.(2)teaching method, the one to decide who is the center in study among students and teachers.(3)books, whether it is interesting is unknown for student that in different taste.
2.2. Domestic and foreign studies on autonomous learning
Autonomous learning is included in philosophy of education, and it developed through 1960s in the 20 century. It is Brunner (1966) who put forward the concept Learner Autonomy；Scholars came up with many ideas and ways of expression. D. P. Ausuble (1978) indicated that autonomous learning including study mechanically and to study meaningful. To study mechanically means the one who could not study actively, but cramming up all the way; inversely, to the one who study meaningfully will firstly comprehend and find out the relationship to help understanding.
2.2.1 Foreign studies on autonomous learning
From then on, in the field of FLW, the concept of autonomous learning was quoted firstly by Henri Holec, the irreplaceable people who wrote Autonomy and Foreign Language Learning in 1981. Autonomous learning studies went further by the end of 1980s. He said that autonomous learning is that learner can control themselves all the way and they can make up targets, then choosing the right method to realize what they have made.
Some scholars regarded autonomous learning as a kind of activity of study that learner learn alone or follow the plant by groups, they made it as an ideal condition that always change, but some times it will be balanced between self-developed and relying on others. Little (1991) sum up these ideas, he thought that learner autonomy should include objective, criticize and independent, another saying, they should learn to take it selectively. After that, researcher proved that autonomous learning is affected by how much the learner believe themselves, and then how to change and improve themselves become the energy to learn.
Benson (2005) defined autonomous learning as the ability to control their study. He said that different people will face different conditions (Liu honggang, 2005). Extremely self-access is a kind of perfect state, but the level of self-access is related to the learners` realization and activities, which means that learners can be influenced by the outer environment and themselves.
2.2.2 Domestic studies on autonomous learning
In our country, the concept of autonomous learning and many studies appeared in 1970s on 20 century, such as Lee gennan in Nanqi high school of Nantong, he followed the teaching method that including three elements: self-study, discuss and guide; Xu changchen put forward the student oriented teaching method in the basic of learning alone, and so on.
These are the cases that people put the autonomous learning into reaching fields. After 1980s, many researchers published their books, including Liu xuehao (1986) and Li shifa (1987). Thanks to the foreign study, our country began to make progresses in autonomous learning. Pang jinding (2002), he defined it that learning should including 5 parts:(1) know the objective and demand; (2) make up one’s plans and objectives; (3)use right study methods; (4)monitor yourself; (5)evaluate your study.
In 2004, Qi hongbo made a questionnaire to investigate whether there are differences between southern and northern country, and he verified that students in our country are not worst than student abroad, it gave us a big lesson that autonomous learning can really do a lot of help. Moreover, Yang jie (2004) made a research and found that the ability to use autonomous learning good o not can influence the efficiency in study.

3. Methodology
3.1 Research questions
Be specific, this research addresses the following three research questions: (!) what is the existing situation of the use of autonomous learning strategies among college translation major students? (2) what are the training effects of autonomous learning? (3) what useful implications of autonomous learning can be drawn from the research outcomes for English learners?
3.2 Subjects
As many researches have been done above, autonomous learning can be very important in our study, and we know that once we form the autonomy, we can make a big progress. As in Zengcheng College, translation majors often do better than other foreign language majors in their study. So in this thesis, we chose the translation majors and try to find out whether translation majors can really do well in study or not. Questionnaires were showed to them and to see current conditions of them.
3.3 Research methods
In this study we first made a questionnaire A (see Appendix A), which was made by Pintrichetal, named MSLQ. It contains 6 items to investigate the basic condition of among two classes (among 80 students) translation major students. From this part we can know why they like this course and how many times they will spend in this course. And then we use questionnaire B (see Appendix B) contains 44 questions to exam the students to use the autonomous learning in their study.
Before starting the experiment, we made 80 questionnaires with each containing 34 items to investigate the situation of the use of autonomous learning strategies among the traslation major, by the teacher. At the same time we can compare class A with class B.
This data collected through the questionnaire written in Chinese and show to the students during their classes. They just pick up a paper and write down their answers. Questionnaires will be collected back after the students finished.
After the questionnaires are collected, we entered them into computer with the help of Microsoft Excel, for it is easier to see the whole situation and then we will valuated the figures by the way of Excel. In detail, we took the questionnaire into 5 parts and discussed them. Then we took the data into excel and form up for convinent to see the whole situation.

4. Results and Analysis of the Questionnaire
In this chapter, we will give detai