Researches On Cultivating Autonomous Leaning Ability In Middle School Students

The reforming of current curriculum needs to arouse students'interests in learning help them transform their studying modes, and achieve the goal of lifelong learning. The objective of cultivating autonomous learning ability in the middle school students is to teach them how to learn and lay a foundation for lifelong learning. The author focuses on whether it is feasible to foster learner autonomy among middle school English learners, whether the enhanced autonomous ability affects their performance in English exams, and also the exact means to foster learner autonomy in middle school English teaching.In this thesis, data are collected mainly in the forms of questionnaires, interviews and experimental research, and analyzed both in quantitative and qualitative methods. The subjects includes 90 students from six classes in three grades of Suzhou Caoqiao Middle School. The subjects'English autonomous learning status have been studied from five aspects, namely the motivation, self-monitoring, learning strategy, self-consciousness, the level of using educational condition. Then, the proximal development theory, the cognitive learning theory, the construction principle theory of learning, the self-adjustment theory of learning threw light on the author's experiment to foster learner autonomy in middle-school, attempting to solve the problems in the previous investigation. In the experiment, students from the two experimental classes were trained to improve the English autonomous learning ability by cultivating their interests in learning English. Feasible learning goals and plans were made by students under the instruction of teachers; meanwhile students learned to manage their time for study, to use effective learning strategies and establish students-centered autonomous learning environment. The experiment lasted two academic years. The major findings of the research reached the following conclusions: (1)The middle school students are not clear in English learning consistency as well as long-term target. (2)They are still lacking in the consciousness of English learning from a general perspective even though they have self-correcting sense to some extent. (3)They are not competent enough to effectively utilize learning tactics of different kinds even though they are already aware of the importance of doing so in English learning. (4)Their capability in assessing learning effect on their own is not strong enough. (5)Their exposure to extracurricular materials and activities is limited. (6)T value below 0.05 in the pairing sample test of the average scores shows that there is significant difference in the average scores of those from the Experiment Class after being trained for one year in self-learning capability. All the results prove that if the teachers adopt relevant tactics to develop the learners'self-learning consciousness and inspire their interest in learning English, this would help the learners set up learning plans, manage their time reasonably timely implement self-assessment, and improve learning tactics.