On Developing Students' English Learing Autonomy In Senior High School

Autonomous learning has been a buzzword in foreign language teaching in the recent twenty years. Social development and research achievements in diverse fields have led to a great interest in learner autonomy. A large body of research concerning learner autonomy has been carried out in western countries. In recent years, the study of learner autonomy has also received increasing attention from teachers and researchers in China. In 2001, the Ministry of Education of China pointed out that schools should take developing students' autonomous learning ability as the primary goal. Students should be taught how to learn. The author put forward the necessity of developing autonomy in English learning among senior high school students from the perspective of the requirements of teaching syllabus and the features of language learning. The author analyzes the theories related to autonomous learning after presenting its definition. The author also put forward the characteristics of autonomous learning and the features of autonomous language learners. The author also analyzes the theories on task-based teaching and learning strategies.This study aims to identify students' autonomous problems and find out effective ways to promote learner autonomy for Chinese senior school students so as to improve the efficiency of English learning. The key questions addressed in this paper are: To what extent are senior high school students autonomous in English learning? How can learner autonomy for senior high school students in EFL be promoted? Based on the theoretical inspection of autonomous learning, the paper presents a survey into the current English teaching and learning among 110 students of a senior high school of ShiYan in HuBei, through questionnaires and interviews. The data analysis of the questionnaires shows that autonomous learning has a great impact on students' learning performance.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. The emphasis is put on the improvement of classroom teaching: putting task-based teaching methodology into practice; the necessity of learning strategies training,...