A Study Of Classroom-based Autonomous English Learning In Senior High Schools

In recent years, the concept of autonomous learning (AL) has become a hot topic in the field of language teaching both at home and abroad. It is always closely associated with the notion of creativity and individuality and its educational goals are to cultivate students’ ability of independent learning skills and lifelong learning. In China, autonomous English learning (AEL) is an approach of learning advocated in the new curriculum reform. In2003, the Chinese Ministry of Education promulgated "The New English Course Standard for the fundamental Education", in which to foster AEL is emphasized as the basic idea and the main goal of English teaching. This goal urges teachers and the education authorities to create favorable environment so as to ensure the overall increase in intelligence and comprehensive ability of all students. This fully shows that in China, the basic stage of English language teaching has shifted to emphasize the development of students’ learner autonomy.Benson (2001:161) argues, if the students are willing or able to cooperate with other students to learn, and can get the teacher’s guidance, their learner autonomy is developed more effective than outside the classroom training. Based on the close literature review at home and abroad on AEL, the author proposed the main idea of the thesis:AEL of senior students can be promoted through classroom-based teaching. Further, the author defines AL in the ESL classroom context as "with the guidance of the teacher, the learner takes responsibility for his/her own English learning in all aspects.However, currently still a large number of educators mistakenly believe that students’AL is "independent study" or "self-isolated study without a teacher". But Little (1995:178) argues that "total independence is not AL but autism." Therefore, it does not mean that teachers are redundant or teachers should give up the control of the classroom. On the contrary,"learner autonomy is obtained through constant training in learning process. Based on educational experience, it needs "educational intervention"(Candy,1991:115), which means the help and guidance from the teachers in the classroom teaching.Based on the theories of AL, the author intends to conduct a survey on200senior high school students from two different senior high schools and20English teachers in Wuhan city through questionnaires and interviews. The questionnaire touches upon students’ perception of their own responsibilities and their teachers, their motivation of learning English, the existing conditions of setting up learning objectives, selecting of learning strategies, monitoring and evaluating their learning process. This questionnaire aims to find out the current learning autonomous situation of senor students and their existing weakness in English learning. The interview involves teachers’ identification of the autonomous learners, teachers’ perception of the AL of their students, and the reasons why AL is impeded in senior high school, for the purpose of finding out the current autonomous learning situation of senor students and coming up with valuable advice and effective approaches to promoting AEL.Data collected from the questionnaire indicates that learner autonomy of students stay at a relatively low level. They have already been mentally prepared, but their real performance is far from satisfactory. They are mainly extrinsically motivated because of the pressure of the teacher or the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE). They seldom make learning plans, use learning strategy appropriately, monitor or evaluate learning processes independently. Half of the students even believe it is their teacher who should take greater responsibility for their learning. And the finding of the interview shows that almost all English teachers hold a positive attitude towards AL in EST classroom context. But various subjective or objective factors put AEL in an awkward position. According to them, students are allowed to learn independently in evening class. And the way of AL is relatively simple. In subjective, these teachers do not believe in their students. Their students are described as dependent and passive learners. In their opinion, students are poor in self-control and reasonable arrangements of their learning. In objective, some impeding factors constrain the practice of AL, such as bad management of education department, deficient language learning resource, the existence of (NCEE), etc.Considering all these factors that impede AEL, this thesis presents a few related recommendations, hoping to guide English teacher in senior high school on the issue of lesson planning and teaching practice. Therefore, the teacher can firstly help students to foster AL by motivating the students through classroom teaching, including raising the students’ awareness for AL, helping learners set their own goals and creating a harmonious classroom atmosphere. Secondly, the teacher can combine learning strategies instruction in regular classroom teaching. In details, it includes introducing the knowledge of learning strategies, applying learning strategies instruction learned in classroom, and then evaluating the learning strategies they have used. Last but not the least, the teacher can integrate self-assessment with classroom activities to monitor AEL.