Junior High School English Autonomy Learning And Research

Full-time Compulsory Education English Curriculum Standard for General High School (generally known as "New English Curriculum Standard") advocates a pedagogical approach characterized by practice, participation, cooperation, and task-fulfillment. It calls for all-round development of students'English language competence in the way that students'creativity, emotional attitude, cross-cultural awareness and the sense of autonomous learning can be developed while involved in the language learning. The New English Standard comes up with the principle of learning independence and learning autonomy. This calls for a shift from the mere transmission of language knowledge and skills to the development of students'sense of learning independence and learning autonomy. However, our traditional examination-oriented English education has produced students who tend to depend more on teachers and textbooks instead of having the habit of thinking and learning independently by themselves.Based on her teaching practice as an intern in a junior middle school and an insight into the current English teaching and learning situation, the author put forth the following hypothesis that middle school students are generally short of a good sense of learning independence and learning autonomy apart from required schoolwork by their teachers, which accounts for their learning inertia and low learning efficiency. This hypothesis is testified in a questionnaire later on. According to the hypothesis and the testified result, the author carried out a 4-month-long experiment for the purpose of justifying the necessity for learning autonomy, as well as exploring an effective approach to guide junior middle school students on the way of learning by themselves out of class.The conclusion from the experiment can be drawn as follows:the development of students'learning autonomy competence helps to motivate their interest in English learning, to improve their study habits and English performance as well.In one word, junior English teaching lays foundation for students'English ability and therefore deserves more of our attention. A strong ability in autonomous learning has great implications for their life-long education.