An Investigation Into EFL Learner Autonomy In Senior High Schools

Learner autonomy has been a buzzword in foreign language teaching in recent twenty years. Grammar-Translation Method has been a main teaching method in China for a long time. It was dominated by a teacher-centered, book centered, grammar-translation method and an emphasis on rote memory. With the change from teacher-centeredness to learner-centeredness in education, the development of learner autonomy has received more and more attention in the field of EFL teaching and learning. Developing learner autonomy in EFL learning is one of the main goals in the New English Curriculum Criteria (2001).Autonomous learning has been misunderstood as"learning in isolation"or"self-instruction / learning without a teacher". Little (1995:178) argues,"It is sometimes thought that learner autonomy necessarily entails total independence—of the teacher, of other learners and of formally approved curricula. But this is not so: total independence is not autonomy but autism."This argument gives corrective to that misunderstanding of learner autonomy.In the study, it finds that most senior high school EFL teachers have known the importance of the training of learner autonomy, but they do not know how to do it. Learner autonomy is influenced by different factors, such as learners'self-efficacy, goal setting, attribution and learning strategies.This paper, taking the theories of constructivism as its guidance, based on the different factors which influence learner autonomy, presents approaches to help senior high school EFL teachers train learner autonomy. It first states the concepts of learner autonomy and different factors which influence learner autonomy, then through questionnaires and interviews, it collects information about the current state of the senior high school students EFL autonomous learning. Then the paper focuses on the approaches which help the EFL teachers train learner autonomy.The author hopes that this thesis will be helpful for senior high school EFL teachers in their lesson planning and teaching practice in the field of fostering learner autonomy.