An Empirical Study Of The Senior School Students’ Autunomous English Learning

During the past decades,autonomous English learning has become a hot topic in foreign language field.As an effective language learning method,autonomous learning meets society’s requirement of cultivating a lifelong learning ability.In recent years,revolution has been made in the field of foreign language teaching in our country.In 2003,the education department in china published The General Education Reform Outline(trial implementation),which points out that the initial aim of education is to cultivate students’ autonomous learning ability and teachers should make full use of various resources to create condition for autonomous learning.In 2014,the education department in china carried out reform in the college entrance examination,which changed English test into social examination.To improve students’ autonomous learning ability became much more important in such situation,which is also every teacher’s significant responsibility.Scholars abroad and at home made many research into autonomous English learning,mainly about theories,such as discussions about the definition and characteristic,statement of the theoretical basis.On the other hand,few apply their minds to the application of these theories,especially taking students in senior high school as researching objects.As a result,the author will concentrate on investigating the basic situation of senior students’ autonomous English learning,analyzing the reasons,figuring out ways to deal with the problem,and trying out the possible teaching model.Firstly,the author will briefly introduce the definition,characteristic and affecting factors of autonomous learning as well as a brief review of autonomous learning abroad and at home,through which the vital importance of this paper will be shown clearly.Then from the aspect of psychology and pedagogy,the author will describe the theoretical background to the development of autonomous English learning,that is,cognitive theory,constructivism theory,and humanism theory.After the author analyzed the academic materials,a survey will be made among the students of Enshi Prefecture High School through interviewing method,and questionnaire survey.Through the survey,the author discovered that the majority of the target students lack the awareness of autonomous English learning and don’t know how to properly use learning strategies,most of whom even don’t know what the learning strategies are.Based on the data analysis,according to the related theory,a teaching model was designed to cultivate students’ autonomous English learning ability which is connected with the reality.Then the author chooses two class of Grade 1 in Enshi Prefecture High School and one class is the experimental class while the other is the comparison.After nearly one term’s research,students in the targeted class developed their autonomous English learning ability and get higher grades compared with before.As a result,the author finds that it’s important and possible to cultivate students’ autonomous English learning ability during class.There are innovations of this paper both in theory and practice,which provides reference for the further research and possible teaching model for teachers.In the author’s opinion,this field can be further developed,for example,how to cultivate autonomous English learning systematically in classroom,which will become the hot topic among the scholars.There is no denying that there exist some limitations in the process of the survey,because the respondents are not in large number.It remains to be seen whether the result can be applied to any school.