An Exploration To Learner Autonomy Of English In Junior Middle School

Autonomous learning has become a hot issue in educational field over the past twenty years. A large body of research concerning LA has been carried out in the western countries, focusing not only on the rational of learner autonomy from pedagogical and philosophical point of view, but also on the means of facilitating the development of learner autonomy. In recent years, the study of LA has also received increasing attention from teachers and researchers in China, but there are few studies aiming to investigate the students' autonomous English learning situation and to evaluate the level of their autonomous English learning competence. With an attempt to fill up such a research gap, this study sets out to examine the level of non-English majors' autonomous English learning competence, to identify students' autonomous problems, and to find out possible strategies to improve autonomous English learning competence in the current Chinese context.Based on humanism and constructivism,this thesis aims to find out the current situation about junior middle school students' autonomous learning through questionnaires by analyzing the factors that influence the students' autonomous learning.308 students from a normal junior middle school in Dalian participated in this study. All of them were required to complete the questionnaire adapted from Cotterall (1995), Oxford (1996) and Dong Qi and Zhou Yong (1994). The questionnaire is composed of 49 items on a five-point scale, which covers five areas: attribution of language successful learning; role of teacher; sense of self-efficacy; important strategies; the nature of language; motivation. The choices they made were transformed into frequencies by SPSS 11.5Results from the study show that the overall degree of junior middle school students' autonomous English learning stays is comparatively high. But there still exist some problems: lack of ability to make and carry out the plan; lack of confidence in their daily study; depending on teacher for studying; lack of internal motivation.Based on all the investigation and analyses, some tentative suggestions are provided, which might be beneficial for the promotion of learner autonomy among Chinese students. In this thesis, the teachers are suggested to share their control over the language classrooms with their students and constructing an environment, which can allow learners to exercise increasing responsibility for their own learning. In the mean time the teachers are suggested to arouse students'interests in study and transfer a teacher's role to motivate students. In addition, learning strategy training is an effective way to enhance students' autonomy in language learning. Finally, the teachers should promote cooperative learning.