Cultivating Students’ English Autonomous Learning Ability Via The Guided Learning Plan In Senior High Schools

Optimizing the learning styles of students and developing their autonomous learning abilityis one of the basic concepts of the new curriculum reform. The main focus of this reform is totransform from the grasp of the language knowledge to the development of comprehensivelanguage ability, turning students’process of learning English into the process of cultivatingstudents’self-learning ability and lifelong learning ability. According to English CurriculumStandards for Ordinary high school , the general goal of English teaching in senior high school isfurther to make clear the purpose of learning English on the basis of compulsory education stageof English learning, encourage students to grasp the language knowledge and skills graduallywith teachers’guidance via experiencing, practicing, exploring and cooperating, enhancestudents’autonomous learning ability and cooperative learning ability, let students form effectivelearning strategies and develop students’language ability in the all-round way. However, innowadays English classrooms, it’s very common for teachers to adopt the traditional instructiveteaching model, which has many shortcomings. The shortcomings are listed as follows. Theteacher is the centre of the class, dominating the whole teaching activities. The teacher’sauthority in teaching discourages students’freedom of choice in learning strategies and styles.Cramming method of teaching is often adopted in the teaching, therefore the teaching model isnot the student-focused. Students are in the position of passively receiving knowledge. Becauseof the teacher’s dominance over the class, students rely on their teachers too much, withoutwhose teaching they can’t carry out learning effectively and the active learning awareness is veryweak. The learning method is mainly remembering the knowledge without knowing how andwhy or practicing what students just learned mechanically. Students are not highly motivatedbefore and during class, which results in their fading interest in English learning. Boring andrigid teaching practice has a bad effect on the students’participation in the class activities. Theclass atmosphere is dull and the learning efficiency is not high. In the teaching model, students’imagination and creative thinking have been greatly confined. Apparently this traditionalteaching model can no longer adapt to the development and requirement of quality-orientededucation in new situations. In the context of new curriculum reform, this situation requires high school English teachers modify their traditional teaching approaches, optimize students’methodsof learning English, strengthen and train students’learning strategies and enhance theirself-learning ability. Teachers should carry out the new outlook of teachers and students,advocate students’initiative learning, promote the change of the learning styles from passivelearning to active learning. Teachers should also emphasize the cultivation of autonomouslearning ability, cooperative learning ability and exploring learning ability. How to make thetransform of learning styles come true? Teachers can firstly modify the conventional andout-of-date teaching concepts and try the best to explore efficient, student-centered teachingmodel.The author of the thesis attempts to explore a certain teaching model based on the guidedlearning plan, that is, making the guided learning plan as a carrier of teaching contents and theteachers’guidance as the tool. The purpose of guided learning plan is to arouse students’learningmotivation and interest, show students’status of class centre, and make the full use of teachers’guidance. Via this guided learning plan, students’learning styles are expected to transform frompassive to active, from reliance to independence, from rigid uniform standard to variety, frommechanic practice to problem-probing activities. By means of the above-mentioned guidedlearning plan, students’autonomous learning ability is expected to be enhanced and lay solidfoundation for lifelong learning and development of the senior high school students.In this research, the author plans to adopt the following research methods, includingreferring to the relevant documents, conducting the questionnaire survey and carrying out theexperiment. In the experiment, the author selects two classes in JiningYucai Middle School,Class 19 and 20 in Grade 1. Class 19 acts as control group, while Class 20 acts as research group.The author performs traditional teaching model in Class 19 and performs teaching via guidedlearning plan in Class 20 to test the hypothesis. After the research, the writer finds that theguided learning plan can promote students’autonomous learning ability and improve theefficiency of English class to some extent.