An Exploration Of Web-based Self-access Learning In The Junior English Middle School Classes

The coming of the information age has brought knowledge which keeps on changing.Lifelong-learning is now a way of life,instead of a fashion.Self-access learning(SAL)provides a useful tool for lifelong learning.With the development of computer network technology,the network has become both pervasive and omnipresent. Network functions have been integrated into SAL.So,web-based SAL is taken seriously.Recent research on web-based SAL in China has been mostly carried out in universities.Meanwhile,web-based self-access in the middle school is hardly noted.As we all know,middle school students are between the ages of 11 and 15,and adolescence is a key time in a person's life when he/she develops from a child into an adult.It is extremely useful for adolescents to develop their skills of web-based SAL in middle schools.Just as the Chinese proverb goes,"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."This research attempts to show that web-based SAL can facilitate middle school students' English learning,through a painstaking study of relevant literature and a positivist research project in classrooms of a junior middle school.A total of 80 students, who are in Grade 8 of a middle school in China,participated in this research project, and they used the same learning materials but different teaching methods in the same quantity of time.They were divided into two groups.One was the experimental class where web-based self-access learning was adopted;the other was the control class where traditional teaching methods were applied.The research was conducted within a flame of interview and questionnaire.The result was analyzed by SPSS(11.5Edition) which is a kind of statistical tool.Out of the 80 subjects,nine were selected for an in-depth qualitative study.Several research questions are raised as follows:1.Is it feasible to carry out Web-based SAL in English classes of junior middle schools?2.Can this web-based SAL approach improve the students' English learning competence?3.Can this web-based SAL approach motivate the students to explore and discover knowledge autonomously and more efficiently than the traditional teaching approach?The research project is concluded with such answers:1.Yes.2.The Web-based SAL approach can improve the students' English overall abilities.3.The Web-based SAL approach can motivate students to learn English more efficiently.Results of the current study exhibit definitive improvement of students' learning under the web-based SAL model,in Chinese context,and some suggestions are presented based on these findings.