An investigation of the relationship between college chinese efl students' autonomous learning capacity and motivation in using computer-assisted language learning

The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between college EFL students' autonomous learning capacity and motivation in using web-based Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) in China. This study included three questionnaires: the student background questionnaire, the questionnaire on student autonomous learning capacity, and the questionnaire on student motivation. They addressed the following research questions: (1) What is the Chinese college EFL students' autonomous learning capacity with the web-based CALL approach chosen by this study? (2) What is the students' classroom motivation towards the web-based CALL approach chosen by this study? (3) What is the relationship between the students autonomous learning capacity and classroom motivation with the web-based CALL approach? (4) Do students of high and low English proficiency differ in their autonomous learning capacity and classroom motivation with the web-based CALL approach? The participants of the study were college undergraduates from five universities in Canton, China. Descriptive statistics were used to investigate the questions concerning students' autonomous learning capacity and motivation with the web-based CALL program. Canonical correlation procedures were used to explore the relationships between students' autonomous learning capacity and motivation. ANOVA was used to investigate how these two factors were influenced by students' English proficiency. The results of the current study led to some interesting findings as well as some implications for L2 motivation theory, future pedagogy, and future research. The study showed that the participants possessed intermediately high autonomous learning capacity and medium motivation towards CALL English learning. Student autonomous learning capacity and student motivation were strongly correlated, and could well explain each other to some extent. The higher autonomous learning capacity a student possessed, the higher learning motivation he/she had. Students of higher autonomous learning capacity and motivation tend to have higher English proficiency, yet there was no significant statistical difference for autonomous learning capacity among the three proficiency groups (high, intermediate, low). Only the motivation towards CALL were found to be statistically different from other two groups. The research showed that the traditional learning process was still the dominant power in the Chinese College English classroom. Web-based CALL couldn’t replace the traditional teaching approach at the present stage, and the teacher would need to give students more guidance to improve their interests and confidence to learn English under the new learning environment.