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of adult education including opening learning anddistance learning have forced educational authorities to search for alternative ways ofproviding education to individuals with diverse needs. Students specializing indifferent majors need specific skills to cope with unpredictable information.Meanwhile, the learners need some ways to cope with information explosion.In recent years the field of language teaching and learning has been in a constantstate of motion. The focus of research in foreign language teaching has been movingfrom “how to teach” to “how to learn”. This shift of responsibility from teachers tostudents motivates great interest among researchers so an increasing number of studieshave been carried out from the learners’ perspective. Learners are now increasinglyencouraged and expected to play a more and more important role in their learning. In2004, the Chinese Ministry of Education indicated clearly that schools should takedeveloping learners’ autonomous learning competence as the primary goal. Therequirements of the society to the vocational graduates have changed to the students’skills instead of the students’ knowledge. To be a part of higher vocational education,with social needs oriented, the college English teachers should conform to society’sdemands and emphasize to cultivate the higher vocational students’ practical skills inusing English language and autonomous learning ability.

Chapter 2 Literature review

The growths of the interests in autonomous learning in education have occurred inthe twentieth century. Nowadays, the educational concept of “learner-centered” iscommonly accepted by foreign language circles, and autonomous learning is widelyaccepted as one of the unquestionable goals and it has found a place in the mainstreameducation, and “few teacher will disagree with the importance of helping languagelearners become more autonomous as learners” (Wenden. 1991:11) So in this chapteran overview of issues concerning autonomous learning is provided. First the differentdefinitions of autonomous learning are presented, and at the end of the passage theauthor gives a definition of the autonomous learning ability. Then theoretical bases aredemonstrated. At the end of this chapter the previous researches related to autonomouslearning are reviewed.

2.1 Definition
Since autonomous learning better caters to the personal needs of learners at alllevels. The learners are so diverse that no formal classroom teaching can satisfy. Weshould get a clear understanding of the definition of autonomous learning. The notionof autonomous learning is slippery. Based on different cultures and differentperspectives, it has been defined in terms of different interpretations such asself-learning, learner autonomy, self-instruction learning, active learning,self-monitored learning, self-regulated learning, self-planned learning, self-directedlearning, self-access learning and individualized instruction etc. Among variousversions of definitions we will introduce some of them.According to Gardner and Miller (2002: 6), the concept of “autonomous learning”stemmed from debates about the development of lifelong learning skills and thedevelopment of independent thinkers in the 1960s. One of the most frequently citeddefinitions is by Holec in 1981. Holec is a leading authority on autonomous learning.He defines the term of autonomous learning as “the ability to take charge of one’本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。