An Empirical Research On Teaching Strategies For Students' Autonomous English Learning In Rural Junior Schools

Enabling students to learn independently is an effective way to learn to learn. Reasonable application of teaching strategies can improve learners'learning to greater extent so that learners can achieve much better efficiency in autonomous learning.Although there are numbers of studies on teaching strategies, most of them are researches at macro-theoretical level, few are on specific subjects, especially for autonomous learning in specific subjects, and researches in rural junior high schools are nearly neglected.Teaching strategies for autonomous learning are strategies to improve awareness and ability of autonomous learning, which are also means for arousing interest in English learning, enhancing learning initiative and promoting ability of autonomous learning.The rural juniors in Grade Eight were the subjects in this study. We chose 92 students who have studied in Xinguan Middle School, and used questionnaires, interviews and records to investigate and analyze their present situations in English learning. The investigation included such aspects:1) learning interest; 2) learning initiative; 3) self-efficacy; 4) learning strategies; 5) self-evaluation & self-monitoring. The qualitative and quantitative analyses of the results showed that the following problems exist in rural juniors:1) Low interest in English learning2) Weak learning initiative3) Little confidence in English learning4) Lacking scientifical and systematical learning methods 5) Poor self-evaluation and self-monitoringBased on humanistic theory and subjectivity theory, the teaching strategies implemented are as follows:1.Teaching strategies for fostering interest in autonomous learning: situation creating, life-oriented teaching content.2.Teaching strategies for stimulating students'motivation for autonomous learning:encouraging by assessment, emotion communication.3.Teaching strategies for promoting autonomous learning ability: instructing goal-setting, instructing learning methods, cultivating the problem awareness, and evaluation extension.The author took a one-year experiment and implemented the teaching strategies for autonomous learning.Divided into experimental class and control class,ninety-two students were chosen as the subjects. Conventional approaches were applied in control class, while in experimental class, teaching strategies for autonomous learning were conducted to cultivate students' consciousness and abilities of autonomous learning. After experiment, the questionnaire survey, the interview, class observation and an examination analysis were made. Compared with their counterparts in control class, the students in experimental class are more interested in English learning, they have higher initiative. In addition, their self-confidence in English learning, their level in learning strategies, self-evaluation and self-monitoring are promoted more significantly. Moreover, they can learn more effectively. Therefore, as far as English teachers are concerned, implementing effective teaching strategies to guide students to learn autonomously, can reinforce consciousness of autonomous learning, improve the ability and then obtain better results.However, some limitations still exist, the sample is small, the experiment time is not long enough, the scores of the less advanced students aren't improved obviously, which are issues to be solved in future study.