A Study Of Students' Autonomous English Learning In Middle School

The Chinese Education Ministry has set the main goal of English teaching and learning as "developing the students' autonomous English learning" in The New English Course Standard for the Basic Education Stage. This urgently demands that teachers and the education authorities create the prerequisites for autonomous learning.On the basis of our research and analysis of students' current autonomy levels and in light of learner autonomy theories, this paper seeks to reveal factors that facilitate and hinder learner autonomy. Accordingly it also offers a few suggestions for how to teach English and promote learner autonomy at lower or intermediate levels. In that sense, the research is both significant in theory and worthwhile in practice.We divided our sample into three pairs of groups and did an independent sample analysis respectively. The study shows that there's a significant difference between junior students and senior students, between male students and female students, and between excellent students and ordinary students. Then we approached the instrumental and impeding factors from three perspectives: the motivation and attitudes of students, teachers' roles, and learners' metacognitive strategies. Three conclusions were drawn from the analysis: 1) Both junior students and senior students are keen on learning English and positive in their attitudes. 2) The authority of the teacher limits students' opportunities of selecting their own learning strategies. Teachers as educators are still scratching the surface as far as learner autonomy is concerned. In theory, people haven't developed a thorough understanding of learner-centeredness; in practice, students are still dominated by teachers. 3) Students are incapable of making use of metacognitive strategies called for in learner autonomy.Another conclusion we derived from the study is that middle school students are poor autonomous language learners. This situation falls short of what education strives to achieve, i.e. the cultivation of autonomous learners. Hence teachers should view it as one of the goals of teaching to foster learner autonomy in students' language acquisition.To better the current situation of autonomous English learning in middle school, the author, based on the results of her survey, ventures to bring forward some constructive recommendations with respect to middle school English teaching.