A Survey On Extracurricular Reading And Autonomous Learning Development Of High School Students

In the past few decades, "autonomous learning" has been increasingly attracting the attention of contemporary educators, who have realized that only by enabling learners to gain learning autonomy can they reach a main goal of education, which is to encourage learners to become life-long learners. However, the current situation of high school students'autonomous learning is unsatisfactory, which is unfavorable for students to achieve the new requirement of extracurricular reading set by the new English Curriculum Standards for Middle Schools issued by the Ministry of Education in 2003. Thus, it is of great necessity to combine developing students'autonomous learning and extracurricular reading.This study aims to find out how to improve the students'learning autonomy through extracurricular reading. The research questions include:1. the present situation of learning autonomy in high school students'extracurricular reading.2. the problems students have in the process of extracurricular reading.3. the guidance the students need in terms of developing their learning autonomy in the process of extracurricular reading.The participants in this study were 87 senior grade one students from a high school of Liaoning province. In order to know the general situation of extracurricular reading, all the subjects were asked to do questionnaires and 8 of them took part in the interview. The results of the questionnaire were analyzed by SPSS 11.5. According to the problems reflected by the questionnaire and interviews, the author put forward some suggestions on how to develop the students'learning autonomy through extracurricular reading in the light of related researches.Results of this study reveal that the students'ability of leaning autonomy in the process of extracurricular reading was relatively low. They lacked of intrinsic motivation and had problems in choosing appropriate reading materials, setting reading goals and plans, applying proper reading strategies and making self-monitoring and self-evaluation of reading process and results. They needed certain guidance and assistance in the above aspects. The implications of the results suggest that teachers should pay attention to extracurricular reading in order to develop the students'learning autonomy and learning strategies, and encourage the students to build positive learning attitudes.