A Study Of The Effects Of Autonomous Learning On Improving Senior High School Students’ English Proficiency

The new curriculum standards of the high school require that the focus of theEnglish teaching should be shifted from the instruction of English language knowledgeto the development of the students’ abilities, with a special emphasis on fosteringstudents’ autonomous learning ability and lifelong learning capacity building. Englishcourse should combine teachers’ instructions with students’ autonomy, making studentsadjust their own learning process effectively, strengthen confidence and form goodlearning habits to build solid foundation for their life-long learning and development.Autonomous learning is just developed under this situation. It connects autonomywith teaching closely and pays attention to the whole learning process of students, inorder to promote students’ further learning through effective teaching and improvestudents’ learning ability ultimately. It’s one of the effective ways to promote Englishteaching quality and promote the development of students’ learning. It fits the idea thatis advocated in our current basic education curriculum. Thus, this article does somestudies in the teaching practice to find out whether the students’ English learningproficiency can be improved through autonomous learning.The article based on constructivism, cooperative learning theory, cognition theory,and “student-centered” philosophy analyses its characteristics, research status, and thedifferences between self-study, and then discusses the necessity to implementautonomous learning in high school English teaching.This study takes two normal classes as the sample. One class is the experimentalgroup, and the other one is the control group. These two classes are of no significantdifference in English on the overall level. In the experimental group, a newstudent-centered teaching method was used. A test was given to both of the classesbefore and after the experiment, and a questionnaire was also provided as soon as theexperiment started and ended. The analysis from this one-semester’s experimentthrough t-test shows that the students in the experimental class are better able to bestimulated in interest in English learning and make greater progress in English learningthan those in the control class.