An Experimental Study On Cultivating Senior High School Students’ Autonomous English Reading Ability

Listening, speaking, reading, writing and translation are the five skills of languages. And reading plays a significant role in language learning and teaching. In the college entrance exam, reading comprehension occupies a large proportion, which means if students intend to achieve high grades, they need to improve their reading abilities and skills. The National English Curriculum asserted a claim to motivate the senior high school students’ learning interest, build up their confidence, form good learning habits, develop valid learning strategies, and obtain autonomous learning competence.In recent years, a large number of educational experts and teachers have acquired a taste for the learner-centered English teaching model. According to The Outline of Mid-Long Development of Education(2010-2020), teachers should take careful notice of training the students’ autonomous learning ability. To a great extent, the teacher is no longer the center of the class, but the supervisor, while the students are the main body. The teacher should encourage and guide the students to form the habit of self-directed learning. Through independent exploration, analysis, practice and creation, the students can make great progress and realize their learning objectives.However, at present, many teachers pay less attention to the reading methods and theories and attach great importance to the scores of the students. In reading teaching, some teachers focus on the linguistic language and lose sight of the structure of the passage, the feelings, the emotional attitudes and values. A large number of teachers translate the passage sentence by sentence and they don’t instruct the students to master some basic reading skills. Some teachers don’t guide the students to have a good knowledge of the writer’s purpose and original thoughts. As a consequence, the students can hardly predict some hidden information. As a matter of fact, when the students read extensively and autonomously and apply readingstrategies to practice, they can improve their reading ability. But the students lack effective autonomous reading. Because of this, the author comes up with some ways to develop the senior high school students’ autonomous reading strategies. First, determine the reading objects and stimulate reading interest and enthusiasm. Second, choose the reading contents and make the extracurricular reading plan autonomously. Third, choose the reading methods independently and form the habit of reading autonomously. Last, assess the reading results and seek the remedy autonomously. When finishing reading, the students ought to reflect and evaluate the reading plans, strategies, skills and manners.In this paper, there are two hypotheses. First, utilizing the mode of autonomous learning can stimulate the students’ reading interest. Second, utilizing the mode of autonomous learning can improve the students’ reading competence. This thesis was on the basis of the theories of Constructivism, Humanism, Cognitive Learning Theory and Zone of Proximal Development theory. The author performed the experiment which continued for a semester in No.1 Senior High School of Funing in Qinhuangdao. The subjects were 90 students chosen from the two parallel classes which were taken as control class and experimental class. The two classes were Class Seven and Class Eight, Senior One. The experimental instruments were the questionnaires, tests and interview. During the semester, the control class used the traditional method and the experimental class adopted the mode of autonomous learning. After the experiment, the author collected and analyzed the convincing and effective data from the questionnaires, the tests and the interview. From the results we can see that the mode of learner autonomy can establish an excellent atmosphere for reading, stimulate the students’ reading interest and motivation and guide them to form the good habits of reading. In addition, the mode of autonomous learning can help the students set up the subject consciousness and cooperative awareness. What’s more, the mode of learner autonomy can create a harmonious relationship between the students and the teachers. At last, the mode of learner autonomy can contribute to the improvement of the students’ reading abilities and achievements.Through the research, the author gains some beneficial pedagogical implications. First, enrich the students’ linguistic knowledge. Second, combine autonomous reading with the teacher’s instruction. Finally, integrate the learner autonomy with other learning methods. The author did a deeper research on the method of autonomous reading teaching and fully investigated the students’ situation of the two classes. As a matter of fact, in the actual operation of teaching, there were still some limitations and deficiencies. In the first place, the standard of the autonomous reading teaching is deficient. In the second place, the mode of autonomous reading teaching adds a burden to the teacher. At last, the sample capacity is insufficient during the research. In consequence, the author offers some suggestions for the future study.