An Experimental Study Of The Relationship Between Cultivating Middle School Students' Autonomous Learning And Improving Their Grades In English

The English Curriculum Standard for Senior High Schools explicitly points out that the English education in senior high schools must be beneficial to the cultivation and development of the students' autonomous learning. However, in the practical English teaching & learning, it is not paid enough attention to. Many teachers doubt whether middle school students' autonomous learning can be cultivated and whether cultivating students' autonomous learning can affect the students' grades in English. For this reason, the author of this thesis did an experimental study of cultivating students' autonomous learning in English teaching &learaing. The study is designed mainly to explore whether students' autonomy can be cultivated in middle schools and whether cultivating students' autonomous learning can really improve their grades in English.In this study, two natural classes of Senior One in Jiuquan Middle School, Gansu Province, were chosen as the subjects. There were 65 students in each class. One class was the experimental class and received an eight-month autonomous learning cultivation-based instruction. The other class was the control class and received an eight-month regular English course. The same textbooks—Senior English for China Book 1, were used in the two classes. All of the students in the two classes took part in a pre-test, a mid-test and a post-test. Besides, all of the students filled out a pre-treatment questionnaire after the pre-test and a post-treatment questionnaire after the post-test. The scores in the three tests and the data gained from the questionnaires were processed and analyzed by using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS 11.0). The study answered the following two questions:1) Can students' English autonomous learning be cultivated in middle schools?2) Can cultivating students' autonomous learning improve their grades in English?The findings indicate that middle school students' English autonomous learning can be cultivated, and that cultivating students' autonomous learning can significantly improve their grades in English.This thesis is made up of seven parts. Part one introduces the background, aim and significance of the study. Part two introduces the definition of autonomous learning and the characteristics of an autonomous learner. Part three presents a review of the literature on autonomous learning. Part four expounds theories relating to cultivating students' autonomous learning in English teaching & learning. Part five highlights the methodology of thisexperimental study by putting out the hypotheses, and describing the subjects, instruments, procedures, data collecting and processing. Part six is about the results of the study and the analyses and discussions of the results. Part seven reaches the conclusion of the study, provides methodological and practical implications, points out the limitations of the study, and gives recommendations for further research in this area.