A Study Of Promoting Senior High School Students' Attitudes Toward Autonomous English Learning

Anyone can see the truth in the proverb. Teachers can easily be aware of the educational importance of helping learners learn how to learn. Agota (2001:4) suggests that the best way to prepare the students for the future leaming task be to help them become more autonomous.In recent years, training programs for learner autonomy have been undertaken in many programs. However, how to promote learners' attitudes toward autonomy hasn't been paid enough attention to nowadays. "Many training has focused only on the teaching of tactics and strategies, overlooking other important factors such as learners' attitudes toward autonmy, beliefs and expectations about language learning and teaching"(Victori and Lochhart, 1995). Only when the students accept the idea are they likely to learn autonomously. Hence, autonomous learning should begin with helping learners have positive attitudes toward autonomy.This paper attempts to promote the Xicheng Experiment Middle School(XEMS) senior high school students' attitudes toward autonomous English learning. The purpose of the study is to investigate the degree of readiness of the students in the middle school to learn independently and test possible methods to influence their attitudes.During the author's teaching, the following questions often occur to the author: What attitudes do XEMS high students have toward autonomous English learning? What are the reasons if they aren't ready to accept autonomy in learning English? How do the teachers change the students' attitudes toward autonomous English learning by training?The author relates the reasons for promoting senior middle school students' attitudes toward autonomous English leaming and introduces the background. Then the method and processes of the study are described. There are two steps: the first is to investigate the attitudes and beliefs of the students and analyze the reasons why they are not ready for autonomy; the second step is a description of the method and processes of the study. Two steps of study are classified. First, investigating the attitudes of the students and analyzing the reasons if they are not ready for autonomy; second, providing necessary training and testing whether the method of the training works so that a great deal of experiment for autonomy training can be on the way. After the investigation and the training, the results are discussed and the conclusion is drawn that the study of promoting the senior high school students' attitudes toward autonomous English learning is valid. What's more, the psychological preparation for the learners is the implication that results of the present study demonstrate to learner and teacher training.The main findings of the research are as follows:From the results of the interview and questionnaire, the author finds that it is necessary to improve the high students' attitudes toward autonomy English learning. The subjects in the experimental group have improved in their overall attitudes toward autonomy. And the improvement on their attitudes is the result of increased knowledge of themselves as language learners and of learning strategies, which responds to the content of training well. The English teachers ought to improve senior high school students' attitudes toward autonomous English learning to guide them how to learn it autonomously.