An Investigation Into Learner Autonomy In English Reading Of Senior High School Students

With the development of the world's politics, economy, and culture, English is becoming more and more important in modern society. However, the efficiency of English learning and teaching at senior high schools is still not adequate, especially in English reading. In spite of mastering the requirements of vocabulary and grammar, the students are still poor in English reading. So how to improve the students'reading ability has become an urgent problem to solve. The theory of learner autonomy is drawing many researchers'attention and it has thus become an unquestionable goal of language education. Some of the researchers attempt to find a new way of improving students'reading proficiency by introducing learner autonomy into English reading. The researcher of this thesis tries to investigate the present situation of learner autonomy in English reading. The thesis pays much attention to the students'control over learning management of English reading manifested in their performance of autonomous behaviors of planning, monitoring, and evaluation in accordance with the three stages of the reading process: before reading, while reading, and after reading. By exploring the students'behaviors of autonomy in English reading, the thesis aims to gauge students'readiness for autonomous learning of English reading and to help teachers make proper plans to develop students'autonomy in English reading. In addition, the possible factors that influence the students'autonomy in reading were also examined in detail.Both quantitative and qualitative methods were utilized in the research. The quantitative data was obtained from a questionnaire responded by first-year students at a senior high school. At the same time, the interviews were carried out to get further information about the factors that hinder the students'autonomy in English reading. By examining the statistical data collected from the questionnaire and carrying out the face-to-face interview, we get an overall impression about the students'autonomous behaviors in English reading. The major findings are as follows: 1. In general, the senior high school students display a certain degree of autonomy in English reading, exactly speaking, students'autonomy varied at the different phases of English reading. Monitoring during reading is a bit higher than in planning before reading and evaluation after reading. Among the three criteria, evaluation in English reading management ranks last, which shows that most of the students are weak in this aspect.2. The study also reveals that there exists positive correlation between the autonomous behaviors in English reading and the reading scores. That is, the better readers the students are, the more autonomously they behave in English reading.3. Some possible factors that hinder the students'autonomy in English reading are summarized by interviewing the two representative groups of the students, such as low motivation in reading, no interest in reading, low self-confidence and the traditional teaching mode, etc.According to the findings above, much should be done to promote the students'autonomy in English reading. The students will benefit from the good habit of learning not only at present but also in the future.