A Study Of Learner Autonomy And English Learning In Chinese Secondary Schools

In the 1960s, educators started debates about the development of life-long learning skillsand the development of independent thinkers, which gave birth to the notion of learnerautonomy. Society develops every day, changes happen everywhere .The future society is acontinual learning society that requires people to learn throughout one's life, while life-longeducation calls for people to develop autonomous learning ability independent from teachersand classes. Learner autonomy has been a buzzword in foreign language teaching in therecent twenty years, especially in western context. The humanism and constructivism haveexerted profound influence on China's educational domain since 1990s. In the year 2000,Chinese Education Ministry set the main goal of English teaching and learning as "developingthe students' autonomous English learning" in the New English Standard Course Standard forthe Basic Education Stage. This urgently demands teachers and grassroots' educationadministration to create the prerequisites for autonomous learning to guarantee all the studentswill improve both in intellect and in overall abilities. However, research on learner autonomywith Chinese students has not yet come to any definite conclusion about the applicability oflearner autonomy in the local context. This study aims to study the factors affecting thesecondary school students' autonomous learning including students' attitudes to Englishlearner autonomy, students' ideas and evaluations about teachers' role and teaching style,students' frequency of metacognition strategies using in English learning and then to elicitsome practical ways to foster learner autonomy in Chinese secondary school English learning.This study presents an investigation into the current English learning in secondaryschools (N=219) using one questionnaire in 3 different schools located in Shandong Province.Students in grade 2 were asked to complete the questionnaire which is composed of 30 itemsconcerning student's attitudes to English learner autonomy and students' ideas and evaluationsabout teacher's role and teaching style and students' frequency of metacognition strategyusing in English learning. At last, 214 answer sheets were valid, the choices they made weretransformed into means and percentages by software SPSS, correlative and descriptivestatistics were used as the basis on which to produce the research questions and all the resultswere presented in tables.The results is summarized as follows: firstly, students show positive attitudes to Englishlearner autonomy. They are eager to be involved in the learning process which has practicalvalue;They believe in the value of effort and self-discipline. These make it possible forteachers to foster autonomous language learning among students in Chinese pedagogicalcontext. However, there is still a long way to go. Secondly, traditional teaching mode affectsstudents' involvement in language learning. Teachers were the authority in classroom teaching,some students were inhibited to choose the favorite learning strategies and style freely. As forthe teaching style, many students considered it to be too dull, lack of variety. Besides,classroom interaction patterns were often featured teacher-centered in which the students hadless opportunities to practice their own learning potentials, and then, students could notreceive teachers' evaluation with proper fair feedback on their work. Thirdly, students are lackof necessary metacognitive knowledge, the deficiency of which inhibits the management oftheir learning.Based on the results of the study, the author comes up with some ways and constructiverecommendations. First of all, students' awareness of learner autonomy should be raised.Since learner autonomy is not innate, the learner can gain it through learner training, i.e.learning how to learn. In view of English learning in Chinese secondary schools, the authorbrings up a detailed methodology of strategy training (including goals, approaches and stepsof strategy training). The author suggests establishing self-access center (including learningmaterials, activities, the role of teachers and assessment), advocating collaborative learning,keeping learner diaries, making learning contracts and benefiting from computers. Besides,teachers are recommended to raise awareness of learner autonomy as well, to improve theirpersonality, to improve their teaching qualification;the education administration isrecommended to advocate learner autonomy more greatly;the author recommends students'parents believe in their children and give their support too. After all, learner autonomy is anintegrated problem requiring efforts of the whole society.