Non-English-Major Students’ Perceptions of Learner Autonomy and Factors Influencing Learner Autonomy in Vietnam

The present paper reports on some stages of an ongoing research project which investigates how Vietnamese non-English-major university students perceive learner autonomy (LA) and which factors, from their perspective, influence the promotion of LA. Data was collected using questionnaires administered to more than 1,500 university undergraduates from different higher education institutions in Hanoi, Vietnam, and 13 students participated in semi-structured interviews. The initial stage of the project, detailed here, was to validate the questionnaire on the basis of reliability and Messick’s (1995) framework of validity. The results revealed that reliability and most aspects of validity investigated in this research were adequately fulfilled, except for the relative goodness indices, which needed improvement. Currently, both quantitative data and qualitative data are being analyzed to reach conclusions. The research results are expected to help the research team to provide suggestions on how to foster LA in English tertiary education. Accordingly, those results will be of interest to language educators in Vietnam in particular, scholars who are researching LA, and those who are interested in the promotion of LA.