Self-determination Theory posits that opportunities to experience three basic psychological needs - autonomy, competence, and relatedness - are essential in promoting life satisfaction and well-being. Based on SDT, a large number of laboratory experiments and field studies have suggested the significance of support for autonomy, competence and relatedness for learners’ well-being, high quality learning, persistence and autonomous learning motivations in educational contexts. However, various educational contexts may differ in their relative support for these three needs. The present study examines the general situation of autonomy support and the role of support for autonomy, competence and relatedness in predicting learners’ autonomous motivations in the Chinese college English classroom context, and explores the environmental variables on the part of English teachers that might bring about the variance in learner’s perceived autonomy, perceived competence and sense of relatedness, and subsequently the variance in learners’ autonomous motivations. It is hoped that the present study will offer some guidance and help for effective English teaching practice in the Chinese context.In this study choice freedom, technical support, self-efficacy enhancement, and emotional support were proposed as antecedents to autonomy, competence and relatedness. The results of independent sample t-test and correlation analysis revealed autonomy support as a significant predictor of autonomous or more self-determined motivations. However, regression analysis indicated that among these four antecedents, only self-efficacy enhancement was a significant independent variable of various types of autonomous motivations. The potential reasons for such a phenomenon were discussed. In addition, based on the regression analysis between separate items of autonomy support and autonomous motivations, some useful suggestions were put forward for English teachers to effectively enhance learner’s autonomous motivations.