A Study Of The Relationship Between English Learner Autonomy And English Academic Achievement Of Senior High Students In Rural Middle Schools

Learner autonomy can meet the various needs, expectations and proficiency levels of individual learners, which can not only help them to have a better understanding of themselves, cultivate their interest in English learning and learn more effectively, but also enable them to become a life-long learner. Researchers and educators in China have shown great interest in learner autonomy but most of the them focus on college students, with very few aiming at senior high school students, especially those from rural areas. China is a country with large number of rural senior high school students. However, due to poor teaching environment and lack of teaching resources, the teaching effect of rural secondary schools is inefficient and depressing. What is worse, the class size in rural middle schools is generally very large and teachers cannot meet every students’ need. As a result, students have to take greater responsibility for their own English learning. Thus, it is significant to investigate the current situation of rural senior high school students’learner autonomy. The present paper focuses on the discussion of learner autonomy adopted by rural senior high school students and its influence on English achievement through186students from three rural senior high schools in Pengzhou, Sichuan Province. In this paper, learner autonomy is measured from five aspects. They are motivation, attitude and belief towards learner autonomy, metacognitive knowledge, the use of learning strategy and external factors respectively. Result shows that1). The level of learner autonomy is in medium range. As for the five aspects, except for the second aspect (M=3.9624), which is in the high level range, the mean values of other four aspects of learner autonomy are also in the medium range.2). Male and female students are significantly different in learner autonomy. Of the five aspects, there is significant difference in the first four aspects of learner autonomy at the0.01level (2-tailed) and the female students are better in them than male students, but there is no significant difference in their response to external factors.3). There is significant differences in learner autonomy between arts students and science students. Significant difference exists in the first four aspects of learner autonomy at the0.01level (2-tailed) in terms of major, but there is no significant difference in their response to external factors.4). Learner autonomy and English scores are positively related to each other. Meanwhile, the five aspects of learner autonomy are all significantly related to English scores.5). High and low graders are significantly different in their responses to all five aspects of learner autonomy:high graders scored higher in all the aspects.