An Experimental Study Of Cultivation Of High School Students’ English Autonomous Learning Ability

Since1960s, there has been a shift of emphasis on language teaching from teacher-centeredness to student-centeredness. Consequently, autonomous learning has become a prominent topic in educational circles and a new trend of foreign language teaching. The term "autonomous learning" was first put forward by Henri Holec, who held that autonomous learning ability is "the ability to take charge of one’s own learning". A learner is considered autonomous when he or she is able to set learning aims, select learning contents and materials as well as methods, decide the learning time, place and progressions and evaluate what he or she has acquired. Ever since then, many linguists and researchers have carried out substantial researches on autonomous learning. Concerning researches on autonomous learning in China, most of them are theoretical ones, and experimental researches are much less, especially researches on fostering high school students’ autonomous learning ability are quite few. In the latest version of English Syllabus for High Schools issued by the Ministry of Education of P.R.C., it clearly states the final aim of secondary education is to cultivate students’ autonomous learning ability and their comprehensive language application ability.Based on current research situation and the requirements of the new Syllabus for High Schools, the author of this paper designs a research on improving junior school students’ autonomous learning ability. The aim of this research is to apply autonomous learning theories to high school English teaching, enhance high school students’ motivation and learning awareness and cultivate their ability to set goals, by selecting appropriate cognitive strategies, monitoring the learning process and evaluating the learning performance. The ultimate goal is to help high school students to participate actively in English learning and become real autonomous learners.The experiment is carried out among100students from2classes of Pingyao No.1middle school in Shanxi Province and it is designed to address the following two questions:①Whether junior school students have formed autonomous learning ability through one year’s training?②Whether students in the experimental class can improve their scores more quickly through autonomous learning training compared with students’ score in the control class? Two instruments are involved in the experiment:questionnaire and tests.The questionnaire is distributed to the students twice (before the experiment and after the experiment) to get a thorough view of the students’ autonomous learning ability from five perspectives:motivation and attitude, aim-setting ability, strategy application ability, self-monitoring and self-evaluation ability. The tests are carried out three times (the entrance examination, the final examination at the end of the first term and the final examination at the end of the second term) to investigate the students’ performances in three different periods and find out whether the scores of the students in the experimental class can be improved under the teacher’s guidance. The author, as the teacher of both the control class and the experimental class, adopts two different teaching ways during the experiment:the traditional teacher-centered way in the control class and the student-centered way in the experimental class to cultivate students’ autonomous ability.The data collected from the questionnaire indicate that more than half of the students in the experimental class have formed autonomous learning ability by the end of the year. Only about20%of the students in the control class have formed autonomous learning ability, which shows the percentage of the students who have autonomous learning ability remains unchanged. The data obtained from the tests show that the scores of the students in the experimental class are obviously higher than those of the students in the control class, due to the increased difficulty of the teaching material. The results of the research show that students in the experimental class have obviously increased their interest in English learning, their autonomous learning ability and their scores as well. Based on the research results, the author offers some suggestions for both teachers and students to cultivate students’ autonomous learning ability.