According to the definition of Holek, the father of autonomous learning theory, autonomous learning ability is "the ability to manage one's own learning". From the perspective of foreign language learning, autonomous learning can enable students to improve their foreign language ability within limited classroom learning time until they master a foreign language. College students have more spare time and can use more extra-curricular resources. They have strong self-awareness and self-management ability, clearer learning goals and career goals, and sufficient conditions for autonomous learning. College English is an important course. College students should not only face the pressure of CET-4 and CET-6, but also meet the growing demand of society for their English ability. In this case, autonomous English learning is not only necessary, but also feasible. According to the relevant theories of autonomous learning at home and abroad and the present situation of college English teaching and learning in China, the cultivation of college students' English autonomous learning ability can be started from the following aspects. 1 Cultivate self-awareness, build up self-confidence and self-awareness, including the understanding of one's learning desire, purpose, concept and style. Researchers Benson and Waller put forward that "the success of a learning activity depends to some extent on learners' attitude, self-feeling and learning desire towards the world, especially learning activities". Therefore, teachers should first help students to reflect on their own learning views, encourage them to establish a correct attitude and form a desire for active learning. Only by adopting a proactive attitude can learners play an active role in the learning process, generate independent ideas and make use of various learning opportunities, rather than just responding to the teacher's teaching stimulation. In addition, strong and positive motivation is an important condition for students to be interested in foreign languages and study hard. Motivation can make learners have indomitable beliefs in difficult situations, and persistence can often overcome the limitations brought by ability and environment. Therefore, motivation training is also very important. Teachers should also help students build self-esteem and self-confidence. Let them believe that their efforts are crucial to learning English and make up their minds to work hard; No matter whether your English foundation is good or bad, you have the ability to manage your study well. Self-esteem and self-confidence can produce a sense of responsibility and independence, and urge learners to take responsibility and consequences for their own learning. Self-esteem and self-confidence are also based on clear self-knowledge. Know whether their cognitive characteristics are rational or perceptual, field-dependent or field-independent, visual or auditory, and so on. Students will not blindly follow and imitate others, but can choose learning materials and methods suitable for their own characteristics to achieve twice the result with half the effort. 2 Setting goals and planning goals play a reference role in the individual's learning process. Under the guidance of established learning objectives, individuals constantly adjust their learning process and learning strategies. Therefore, the goal is regarded as the core component of autonomous learning. However, Xu Jinfen and others' research found that although many college students think English learning is very important, they have no plans to learn English except to finish their homework, preview and review the texts assigned by their teachers. Even if there is, the schedule is quite arbitrary and often fails to achieve the expected goal. In view of this situation, teachers should play the role of helper and supervisor, and guide students to set learning goals according to their English foundation, ability level, personal interests, professional characteristics and future development needs. Tell them not to set vague goals such as "I will try my best to pass Band 4", but to set some small and specific short-term goals, because the realization of short-term goals can make students see the growth of some of their abilities faster, and the requirements for their will control are lower. The successful realization of a goal will often promote the determination and realization of new goals. The planned learning progress is very important. The survey results show that many students unconsciously use their self-study time or spare time to arrange their study activities, and 70% of the students surveyed claim that they have not grasped these time tightly. Other similar surveys also show that students' self-arrangement and management of study time are not satisfactory. Undoubtedly, in the case of using effective strategies, if you want to gain higher English ability, you have to get in touch with English as much as possible if the environment permits. Zimmerman, a researcher of autonomous learning, suggested that students should establish regular learning cycles and make it a habit to study within a predetermined time every day. He believes that teaching students to manage and arrange their study time effectively is also an important goal to be established in autonomous learning teaching. This kind of teaching generally includes the following steps: discussing the use of time with students; Let students record their time use in a certain period of time and realize how they use their time; Make a personal timetable and determine the time that can be used independently; Ask students to estimate the time required to complete autonomous learning activities and fill in the timetable accordingly; Check the completion of the plan and the learning effect after the end of this paragraph. After learning and using learning strategies, we should put them into practice. It is very important to adopt methods and strategies suitable for one's cognitive characteristics and learning style. As researcher Candy said, "How to learn and what to learn are closely related-the overall method adopted by a learner will greatly affect his learning results." So, how are our students' strategies used? A survey of non-English majors' autonomous learning in Xu Jinfen shows that many students don't know what learning strategies are. According to Wang Jing's survey of autonomous learning, the vast majority of students are in the category of "sometimes using", whether it is the overall strategy of English learning or the strategic use of individual skills such as vocabulary learning and reading learning, which shows that our students rarely use learning strategies. This situation is related to the fact that English teaching in China has always attached importance to knowledge transmission and neglected skill training. Therefore, it is very necessary to carry out clear strategy training for students. According to Cohen, a famous strategy researcher, "the most effective way to improve learners' strategic awareness is for teachers to teach students strategy-based teaching as part of foreign language courses" and "teach them clearly how to apply language learning and using strategies", that is, to let students learn how to learn a foreign language. Researchers Cha Mote and Lu Bin put forward the practice of strategy training: discovering and discussing the strategies used by learners; Put forward new strategies; Demonstrate new strategies; Explain why and when to use these policies; Practice the use of strategy with real tasks and verify its effect. Therefore, we can guide students to self-diagnose their strengths and weaknesses in English learning; Let them compare and experiment with their familiar strategies and newly acquired strategies; Let them decide for themselves what strategies to use to complete a learning task; Give them the opportunity to try to apply the previously successful strategies to the new learning environment. These are of great benefit to students to better control their studies. It is best to infiltrate strategies in English class for a long time, introduce relevant strategies to students at any time according to learning content and learning activities, guide and supervise their use, and give individual guidance to individual students at the same time. It should be noted that the ultimate goal of strategy training is to make students consciously use strategies and know when to use them, rather than focusing on teaching specific strategies, because they may be inexhaustible. 4 timely reflection, evaluation and adjustment Many of our students have no self-reflection and evaluation in the learning process. They only passively follow the teacher's teaching procedures, passively accept the teacher's supervision and inspection, and never regard themselves as observers, supervisors, judges and manipulators of their own learning, which requires teachers to guide and help them cultivate this ability. Reflection first involves the process of self-judgment, including self-evaluation and attribution analysis. Self-evaluation refers to the evaluation of whether the learning result is consistent with the expected goal and the importance of the learning result. Attribution analysis refers to the analysis of the reasons for the established learning results, such as whether the poor academic performance is due to limited ability or insufficient efforts. We can evaluate the quality, quantity and speed of learning. Most researchers believe that students will benefit a lot from written reflection, such as writing study diaries, stage summaries and self-reports. Teachers just need to help them figure out what criteria to use to evaluate their study. In essence, autonomous learning is a kind of self-regulated learning, that is, the process in which individuals actively choose, adjust and control their own learning. For English learning, it means "learners constantly adjust their ideas and methods according to the changes of internal and external factors in the system, so that the relationship between the factors is in the best coordination state and the potential ability to learn English is fully exerted". The language learning system is open and dynamic. In different periods, the emphasis and difficulty of learning are different, and the learning strategies should also change with the changes of the situation. Therefore, "adjustment" is the key to the good operation and good learning effect of the strategy system. When students can't consciously adjust their strategies in time, teachers can remind, guide, or personally control them, and then gradually let go, only supervising students' self-adjustment and making encouraging and formative evaluations. Conclusion The cultivation of autonomous learning ability is an important goal of modern education and the current college English teaching reform in China. An important sign of the success of the reform of teaching mode is the formation of students' personalized learning style and the development of students' autonomous learning ability. Our training goal is to enable students to independently learn foreign language knowledge and skills needed in their career and life in the future non-teaching environment. The cultivation of autonomous ability in university stage is very important, and it should be gradually and comprehensively developed from several basic steps, such as stimulating students' self-knowledge, guiding students to make study plans, conducting strategy training and developing metacognitive monitoring.