SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING OF STUDENTS IN EGP AT UNIVERSITY OF BIRJAND

According to new learning and teaching theories, SDL is of great importance. To learn an international language, for our case English, is also of the same importance to help the students to gain life-long learning. So this research is done to measure the level of self-direction of students in learning EGP at the University of Birjand. Our statistical population consists of all freshmen who have taken EGP course in 2009-2010 academic year at the University of Birjand. 192 were randomly chosen as sample from a population of 400. We used a questionnaire of 29 questions. In it we tested three main elements of SDL, ie. personal qualities, meta-cognition process, learning context, and 13 sub-elements of SDL, ie. self-autonomy, self-efficiency, self-monitoring, self-management, self-motivation, self-confidence, self-satisfaction, goal-setting, personal responsibility, self-regulatory, self-controlling, self-evaluation, and self-awareness. Findings showed that the students are weak in all elements of self-direction in EGP learning except for self-satisfaction.