A Research On The Strategies To Develop Pupils’ Autonomous English Learning In Rural Primary Schools Of Ethnic Minority Areas

According to the New English Curriculum Standard for Elementary School from Ministry of Education(2011),learner autonomy is one of the most important ways that the new curriculum reform advocates.While in the current rural primary schools,most of English teachers regard themselves rather than the pupils as the main body in their teaching process.In this paper,the author makes a survey in a rural primary school of ethnic minority areas and does a comprehensive research on the present situation of the pupils’ autonomous English learning in the rural primary schools of ethnic minority areas as well as the influencing factors to develop the pupils’ autonomy.Then the author tries to explore a series of corresponding strategies to develop the pupils’ autonomous English learning on the theoretical basis,such as Humanistic Theory,Cognitive Theory and Meta-cognitive Theory,hoping to give reference to the English teachers in the rural primary schools of ethnic minority areas or the other similar schools.In this paper,the author firstly makes a review of the related researches both at home and abroad to make a narrow definition of autonomous learning for this study,that is,learning is students’ conscious,self-disciplined,active learning with the scientific guidance and help of teachers.But in the elementary students’ learner autonomy,the teachers’ guidance and support role should be emphasized.Meanwhile the author analyzes the factors that influence the development of learner autonomy by interviewing the teachers,parents,students.The author gives questionnaires to 74 pupils of Grades 4-6 in Jixing Rural Primary School of Jinkouhe County,Leshan City,Sichuan Province and makes an interview with some of them and then uses the soft excel and statistics 19.0 to analyze the data.The result shows that the students have generally poor autonomous English learning,but the excellent students are much better.Then the author carries out the research mainly from the perspective of teachers to develop students’ autonomous English learning from the aspects of teaching management,classroom instruction and teaching evaluation,in order to find out the efficient strategies.An academic year later,the questionnaires on the level of autonomous English learning are given to the same respondents.Compared with the two groups of survey data,it’s easy to get that the strategies are efficient.Moreover,compared with the students in urban schools,the rural students’ testing grades are improved much more,which proves the rural primary schools can also cultivate good children even though their family conditions are not very good.Finally,the author puts forwards the shortcomings of the study and hopes the future researches on this topic can be much better.