A Study On The English Autonomy Of Senior High Students In Chongqing

The field of foreign language learning and teaching has been in a constant state of change over the last two decades. The main one has been a shift in focus from the teacher to the language learner. As Little (1991) described,"Learner autonomy is the new'buzz-word'in the field of applied linguistics in the recent twenty years."There has been an extensive literature on learning to learn, on developing independent learning and on autonomy abroad since the 1960s.While in China, study on learner autonomy only started in the mid-1980s, which mainly introduces the related researches abroad, or puts an emphasis on the importance of learner autonomy in colleges as well as training the learner in terms of strategies development and learning skills. Little importance has been attached to the practical study on learner autonomy in English teaching and learning in senior high schools. 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. In 2003, the Ministry of Education again demanded that one of the primary objectives of the English course in elementary education is to develop autonomous learning ability.This study aims to identify students'autonomous problems in Chongqing, and find out effective ways to promote learner autonomy for senior high school students so as to improve the efficiency of English learning. The key questions addressed in this thesis are: what levels are senior high school students autonomous in English learning in Chongqing? Is there any difference between male and female students in their English autonomous learning? How to promote senior high school students'learning autonomy in their learning?In order to get a clearer picture of senior high students'current autonomy levels, the present study classifies the students according to gender. Two hundred and thirty-eight senior high school students participated from two different senior high schools in Chongqing. All of them were required to complete the questionnaire which was adapted. The questionnaire is composed of thirty items covering six crucial factors to learner autonomy: motivation, emotion, cognitive strategies, metacognitive strategies, communicative strategies and resource strategies. The choices they made were processed by SPSS for descriptive analysis.The findings show that the current level of autonomous learning among senior high school students in Chongqing remains at a low level, especially in cognitive strategies, metacognitive strategies, communicative strategies, and resource strategies. The study also reveals that there are significant differences between male and female students in terms of motivation, cognitive, communicative strategy, resource strategy, that is to say, female students are more autonomous than male students in language learning.Accordingly, the author offers some suggestions on promoting learner autonomy in English learning of senior high school. These suggestions include: enhancing students'motivation, using affective teaching, developing students'learning strategies, establishing autonomous learning center, suggestions male students.An initial achievement has just been made in the research. There must be many problems to be discussed and solved before autonomous learning is widely carried out in senior English courses. But we do believe that this study can make more senior high school English teachers realize the current situation of learner autonomy among their students, and urge them to search for effective ways to foster learner autonomy so as to improve the efficiency of English teaching.