A Study Of Learner Autonomy In Senior High School English Study

For a long time, Chinese high school English teaching has been dominated by a teacher-centered, book-centered and grammar-translation method. Learner autonomy has gained great popularity among researchers home and abroad since Henri Holec first gave its definition in 1981. In recent years, learner autonomy is becoming increasingly important in China. The newly-issued English Course Standard also requests that autonomy learning ability should be an aim for foreign language teaching. For example, Regular High School English Course Standard points out that designs and operations of high school English teaching should help to improve students'studying methods. Students should hold active attitudes toward studies by observing, experiencing and researching. In this way, students can develop their potential, effective studying strategies and autonomy learning ability. Besides, autonomy learning can help students learn how to use computers and information resources. Thus students are guaranteed to have more ways to learn and develop their own learning styles.This study was based on humanistic theory, constructivism theory, cognitive theory, and self-regulated theory on autonomous learning. It involved 128 high school students of grade one from Changzhou Tianjiabin Experimental Senior High School in Jiangsu province. A questionnaire was adopted to find out what beliefs senior high school students have towards learner autonomy, what problems with them in terms of autonomous learning and in what practical ways to develop the senior high school students'autonomous English learning abilities.The result suggests that students'ability of self-efficiency, self-control, self-regulation, self-administration and self-evaluation are relatively poor, which consequently effects the development of autonomous English learning abilities. At the last part of the passage, the author raises four solutions to the problems: Change the concepts of teaching; Stimulate the consciousness of autonomous learning; Cultivate the independent learning ability; Reform the education appraisal system.