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uage. This will be discussed later in the thesis. To acknowledge, however, that learners have to follow certain paths to attain autonomy is tantamount to asserting that there has to be a teacher on whom it will be incumbent to show the way. In other words, autonomous learning is by no means “teacher- less” learning. Learners need a lot of guidance: first of all, to be able to identify their learning needs, and also find the method that best suits them. And teacher is the right person who can meet the needs of learners. As Sheerin (1997, cited in Benson & Voller, 1997:63) succinctly puts it, “teachers have a crucial role to play in them a regular helping hand to stay afloat.” 2. Ways to foster learner autonomy in ELT in China 2.1Combining cooperative learning with independent learning It is believed that cooperative learning is an appropriate way to enhance learner autonomy. Learners are engaged in the activities that require them to use English for genuine communicative purposes and thus allow them to be independent learners. Learning is an interactive, social process. Learning is not simply a matter of rote memorization; “it is a constructive process that involves actively seeking meaning from (or even imposing meaning on) events”(Candy, 1991). For most of us, important learning experiences are likely to be remembered at least partly in terms of our relationships with one or more other learners or with a teacher. As mentioned above, we are social creatures, and as such we depend on one another in an infinity of ways. However, we should recognize that learner autonomy is not only individual, but also social, as it entails “a capacity and willingness to act independently and in cooperation with others, as a socially responsible person.”(Little & Dam, 1998: 54). Without the stimulus and comfort of social interaction, for example, learner’s development is disastrously impaired: it is our condition that we learn from one another. Thus, the independence that we exercise through our developed capacity for autonomous behavior is always conditioned and constrained by our inescapable interdependence. In contexts of formal learning as elsewhere, we necessarily depend on others even as we exercise our independence. Vygotsky’s approach then emphasizes that social interaction collaboration is essential to learning process (Vygotsky, 1978). This involves the use of alternative learning environments where students can collaborate and interact in pairs or larger groups, new environments that have not been shaped by teacher-centered, no-collaborative classrooms. External social interaction and interal cognitive interaction are, of course, in separable and influence each other .The idea that learning process is thus to include the learning process of their peers. Of course, collaborative learning should be combined with independent learning in the situations in which learners study on their own. This implies a positive view of classroom as places teachers and learners can collaborate to construct knowledge. More precisely, classrooms are physical environment where teachers and learners have the opportunity to become a learning community. When the focus of learning is a second or foreign language, the target language itself is one of the principal tools with which that collaborative process is shaped. Therefore, in the class, students are often divided into groups or they form groups freely to collaborate. The others form is working in pairs. After