An Experimental Study Of Fostering The Senior School Students' English AL Ability Under The New English Syllabus

In recent years, learner autonomy has become a prominent topic in the educational circles and also a new trend of foreign language teaching. The term"learner autonomy"was first put forward in 1981 by Henri Holec in his book Autonomy and Foreign Language Learning. According to Holec, learner autonomy is"the ability to take charge of one's own learning". A learner is considered autonomous when he or she is able to set the learning objectives; select the contents, the materials and methods to be used; determine the time, place and progressions and evaluate what has been acquired. Ever since the birth of the concept, many linguists and researchers have paid great attention to it and substantial researches and exploration on it have been carried out. A great deal of research concerning learner autonomy has been carried out in the western countries, focusing not only on the rationale of learner autonomy from pedagogical and philosophical point of view, but also on the means of facilitating the development of learner autonomy.The purpose of this research is to probe into a new idea in English autonomous learning teaching in senior high schools. The focus of this research is to incorporate the autonomous learning theory into English classroom teaching, which aims at teaching students at the level of senior high school skills in autonomous learning strategies. Particular concern is given to those teaching strategies, which would enable the students to participate actively in English study and become real autonomous learners.This thesis reviews the conception of the autonomous learning, its characteristics and the factors which affect it, sums up the features of the autonomous learning teaching and comes up with the principles which the autonomous learning English teaching in senior high schools should obey. On this base, this thesis proposes the autonomous English learning teaching model in senior high schools focusing on promoting the students'autonomous learning ability. In this experimental research, two average classes were chosen. The teaching materials are the textbooks of Senior English for China, Student's Book 1A and 1B. Basing on the autonomous learning theory, the author made optimal designs for English autonomous learning teaching, creating more possibilities for involving as many activities as possible to meet the students'needs and to motivate their English study interest. Meanwhile the author designed a questionairy to test the students'autonomous learning ability distributing. After a period of experiment, the result of the comparisons between the pre-tests and the post-tests proved this model is be of help for increasing the students'study interests, fostering the students'positive study attitude, improving the current low efficiency English teaching situation and cultivating the students'autonomous learning ability. So, this autonomous teaching model is exactly doable.There are five chapters in this thesis.Chapter One reviews the background of the autonomous learning research and points out the concept, characteristics and the theory base of autonomous learning.Chapter Two explains the current English teaching situation in senior high schools and the necessity and feasibility of autonomous learning.Chapter Three analyzes the factors that affect autonomous learning and inductives the English teaching strategy for autonomous learning. On the base of the previous theories, we suppose the autonomous learning teaching model in senior high schools.Chapter Four explains the experiment of practicing the autonomous learning teaching model in senior high schools. We chose two classes which are of the same level. Class 1 acted as the experiment class, and Class 2 is the control class. After one school year's autonomous learning training, the students in the Experiment Class were improved to have their autonomous learning ability. Their grades were much higher than those of the ones in the Control Class.Chapter Five is the conclusion. On the base of the experiment mentioned in Chapter Four, we gave some advice on English teaching in senior high schools to better accelerate the cultivation of students'autonomous learning ability. The realization of autonomous learning does not only depend on the change of the teaching ideas, but also the development of the education and the quality of the learners. For us teachers, that is a chance as well as a challenge.Autonomous learning theory offers us teachers a new range of vision to deepen our understanding of quality education and English education reform. As we all know, no educational theory is a master key to all doors. How to stimulate the students'autonomous learning interest, how to motivate us teachers to change ideas and explore new teaching methods and how to create a equal and free study environment for the students are what we teachers expect to consider and study. How to conduct our daily teaching with the theory of autonomous learning as a guide and get more and more teachers inspired by the theory and put it into teaching practice will still be a problem to be further studied in the future.This study subjects are the students from Grade One in a key senior high school. Weather the study result would be suitable for the whole students in senior high school in other poor areas remains to be seen.