A Study On Developing Learner Autonomy In Senior Middle School

With the development of society, the lifelong education has received more and more attention. Why? For one thing, the knowledge and skills that students gained in school cannot meet the needs of the fast development of Hi-tech. For another, compared with pupils and junior middle school students, senior middle school students have developed higher learning motivation, meta-cognitive ability and cognitive ability, which has built a solid basis of their autonomous learning development. Besides, New English Curriculum Standard in China requires English teachers to drop the traditional "transmission" teaching model, which emphasizes on teaching English language points rather than developing students' ability to learn. Ancient educationalist Confucius pointed out that " Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and you have fed him for a lifetime." His argument has, in fact, shown the importance of developing learner autonomy. So we English teachers should pay more attention to our students' autonomous learning ability than their knowledge and skills, to prepare them for lifelong education. But the survey shows that the senior middle school students' autonomous learning ability is poor. In teaching English in senior middle schools, the author has also found that the students are dependent on their teachers and deficient in learning strategies. Thus the idea of developing senior middle school students' autonomous learning ability is born.This essay is based on the theories and experiments. It first reviews language learning theories such as behaviorism, cognitive learning theory, constructivism, humanistic learning theory, the theory of the zone of proximal development and communicative learning theory, from which the author puts forward a hypothesis, that is, students' autonomous learning ability can be developed by stimulating their motivation, increasing their learning strategies and carrying out activities. Then the author conducts an experiment to test the hypothesis as follows:At the beginning of the new term, the author tests the students' autonomous learning ability in two classes and then does the experiment in only one of them. At the end of the term, the author tests learner autonomy in the same two classes. By comparing the first and the second test results, the author finds that the students' autonomous learning ability in the experimental class has been improved much more than that in the controlled class. What's more, in the final English examination of the term, the students in the experimental class did better than the students in the controlled class. On this basis, the author draws a conclusion about the success of the experiment.So the author derives inspiration from the efficient experiment: students should be the center of our English teaching in senior middle school; the teacher acts as a facilitator, coordinator, organizer, assessor and resource; the teacher's proper guidance and training on students can facilitate their progress in autonomous learning ability.