Learners' Autonomous Learning On English Reading And Writing In General High School

Autonomous language learning, based on theories such as constructivism in cognitive psychology as well as humanism in psychology is starting to be an unquestionable goal and integral part of language learning methodologies throughout the world and displaying its great vitality. Definitions of autonomous learning have been varied, but they include the following central features; learners should take responsibilities for their own learning, which involves learners in taking ownership of many processes such as deciding on learning objectives, selecting learning methods and materials as well as evaluating progress. For a long time, however, the practice in high school English classroom in China has been teacher-centered. The teaching procedure is from teacher to learners alone. Thus the forced- feed method is everything in formal instruction. Learners are less autonomous and the teaching is low efficient.This study aims to examine the validity of autonomous language learning in the context of general high school so as to explore an approach to English teaching and furthermore improve its current condition in general high school.This six-month autonomous language learning experiment contains two questionnaire surveys as well as classroom-in observation & classroom-out interview. Questionnaire One contains such questions as why the subjects are losing interest in English and what is the subjects' favorite teaching method, Questionnaire Two makes a comparison of the data obtained from the subjects learning in the two different learning situations. Classroom-in observation and classroom-out interview show us changes in subjects' attitude towards reading comprehension and writing before & after this experiment, hence we get an overall picture of this research subjects.The data analysis shows compared with the students learning in the traditional situation the students in the autonomous language learning situation take a more positive attitude toward autonomous language learning and get more and more interested in learning English, moreover their abilities of reading comprehension and writing has better improved, but they have inferior executive abilities to pursue autonomous language learning because they lack learning strategies, expect to rely more on the teacher and have lower sense of self-efficacy. Therefore, we still have a long way to go to make our students learn autonomously and independently. In order to achieve this goal, the teacher should serve as 'scaffolding', providing learner training to enhance the autonomous language learning.The present study is only a tentative one. Before the thesis comes to the conclusion, some proposals are put forward so as to offer a modest spur to trigger more valuable contributions in this field.