Cultivating An Awareness Of Autonomous Learning Of The English Language In Senior High School

Autonomous learning has been a buzzword in foreign language teaching in the recent twenty years. This thesis focuses on how to cultivate students' autonomous learning competence in senior high schools. The author firstly expatiates on the possibility and necessity of developing autonomy in English learning among senior high school students by introducing the background of and the former researches on autonomous learning from the perspective of the design features of language, the requirements of teaching syllabus and the advantages of autonomous learning. Secondly, the author analyzes the theories related to autonomous learning after presenting its core definition, puts forward its characteristics and explores the factors affecting autonomous learning from internal and external aspects. Based on the theoretical inspection of autonomous learning, the paper presents a survey into the current English teaching and learning among 120 students of a senior high school of Xuzhou in Jiangsu, through questionnaires and interviews. The data analysis of the questionnaires shows that autonomous learning has a great impact on students' learning performance and language learning achievement.Based on these discussions, suggestions are made on how to cultivate and promote the awareness and improve the competence of learners' autonomous learning in EFL. Due emphasis is put on the improvement of classroom teaching, the shift of teacher's and learner's role and the change of learning strategies to better the current English teaching and learning in senior high schools.