A Study On The Status Quo Of Senior High School Students' English Autonomous Learning In Guangxi Minority Areas

English autonomous learning has always been a hot topic in the field of foreign language education.A great many of scholars and educators have conducted numerous researches on English autonomous learning and made remarkable achievements.Nevertheless,most of the present studies on English autonomous learning concentrate on university students.There are relatively few researches on EAL investigating students in elementary and secondary schools,not to mention the high school students in Guangxi minority areas.Therefore,it is of great significance to investigate the status quo of high school students' English autonomous learning in Guangxi minority areas,which may have a positive influence on developing students' English autonomous learning and provide some more effective suggestions for English teaching in Guangxi minority areas.In accordance with the overview of relevant studies at home and abroad,and on the strength of the theory of humanism,cognitivism and constructivism as the theoretical foundations,the author adopted questionnaires and interviews to investigate 300 high school students from Baise high school and Duan high school in Guangxi minority areas.And on the basis of the results of the questionnaires which were analyzed by SPSS20.0,eight students were chosen randomly to have deeper interviews.The questionnaire mainly refers to the autonomous learning scale designed by professor Pang Weiguo.And,the revised English Autonomous Learning Scale includes seven dimensions: learning motivation,learning contents,learning strategies,learning time,learning process,learning results and learning environment.This research investigated these two senior high schools in Guangxi minority areas and aimed to explore the following three questions:(1)What is the status quo of students' English autonomous learning?(2)Is there any difference among Han students,Zhuang students and other minority students in terms of English autonomous learning?(3)What are the factors affecting students' English autonomous learning?The research results indicate that the status quo of the investigated high school students' EAL in Guangxi minority areas is just at the medium level,and all the seven dimensions also stand at the intermediate level.Among the seven dimensions,learning results win the highest mean scores,while learning strategies get the lowest scores.Some problems existing in students' EAL are as follows.Firstly,the students have learning motivations but most of them are extrinsic.Secondly,they are not able to select learning contents and set suitable learning objectives autonomously.Thirdly,they are not capable of making feasible learning plans.Fourthly,they cannot apply learning strategies appropriately.Fifthly,they are not good at self-monitoring and their evaluation methods are singular.Lastly,they are unable to make full use of learning resources to create favorable learning environment.Meanwhile,the analyzed data proves that there is no significant difference among Han students,Zhuang students and other minority students with regard to EAL.Moreover,the factors affecting students' EAL include internal factors and external factors.Internal factors contain the lack of enough intrinsic motivation,initiative awareness and the knowledge of learning strategies.And external factors consist of traditional teacher-centered teaching model,exam-oriented educational system,and unfavorable learning environment,which are not good at developing students' EAL.Based on the research results,some suggestions for both students and teachers are put forward to promote students' English autonomous learning.However,because the sample size is relatively small and the research methods are not various enough,this research still exists some disadvantages.In terms of the deficiencies of this study,the author also proposes some recommendations for future studies to improve.