Cultivation Of English Learner Autonomy Through Meta-cognitive Strategy-based Instruction In Senior High Schools

The author has been teaching English in a common senior high school for more thanthree years. From her own teaching experiences, she finds that the efficiency of the seniorhigh school students’ English learning is terribly low, and they lack learner autonomy andappropriate language learning strategies, and the English teachers lay more stress on thelanguage knowledge but pay less attention to instructing the students in learning strategies.Therefore, it is pressing for educators to find an effective way to solve the problem.In recent years, the researches into the learning strategies of the second languagelearning affirm the important role of meta-cognition in language learning. Gradually, thepractical potential of meta-cognitive strategies is realized by people. Learner autonomy hasalso become a hot topic for English teaching and researches. It is one of the key goals ofEnglish teaching to cultivate the students’ ability of learner autonomy in language learning. Itwill lay a good foundation for the students’ lifelong English learning. So the author tries toseek a breakthrough from these two aspects to solve the problem mentioned above.This thesis aims to explore the functions and influences of meta-cognitive strategies oncultivating senior high school students’ learner autonomy in learning English. The author firstreviews the related literature and then carries out a teaching experiment. Two classes ofGrade One at a common senior high school in Renqiu are selected as the research subjects toparticipate in the experiment, and their English teacher Miss Ma is invited to be theexperimenter. The whole experiment lasts four months. In the study, the statistical softwareSPSS is used to analyze the collected data. The author makes a conclusion on the basis of thestatistical analysis: students in the experimental class generally improve their level of usingmeta-cognitive strategies, develop their ability of learner autonomy in different degrees andimprove their English level. Compared with the students in the control group, more studentsin the experimental group are able to independently make learning plans, monitor theirlearning process and evaluate the results of their own learning. Finally, the author writes thepedagogical implications and limitations of the study.