A Case Study On Negative Effects Of The Learner Autonomy In Secondary School English Class

Since the1990s, autonomous learning has become a hot topic in the field of teaching all over the world. Developing learner autonomy has become an important goal of modern education. Elementary education in China has also followed the trend to reform. The new English Curriculum Standards specifically takes guiding students’autonomous learning, cooperative learning and inquiry learning as important tasks to change their way of learning. Language teachers and researchers have become more interested in learner-centered classes than teacher-centered classes. A lot of experiments have done in schools to cultivate students’ autonomous learning ability, which makes some significant progress. They design some teaching mode based on learner autonomy. Researches about the positive aspects of autonomous learning class are published in succession. However, researchers haven’t reached an agreement on the specific procedure of autonomous learning class. Those various learner-autonomy class are only applied in some schools, not widely in China. On one hand, because autonomous learning class is still in the exploratory stage in China, difficult to be successfully practiced under China’s special education background; On the other hand, because these teaching patterns themselves are imperfect, some unforeseen problems occurring in practice.Considering the scarce research on the negative impact of autonomous learning class, and that autonomous learning class shows various forms because of being on different ideas and theories, the author takes Z-mode class of a secondary school in Beijing as a case study of learner autonomy in English class to explore the negative effects of cooperative autonomous learning class on students, teachers and classroom management. Z class is formed mainly on Christine Ward’s brain-friendly theory. This research makes use of a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews as two primary tools to collect secondary school students and teachers’viewpoints on Z-mode class. In addition, six teachers’ feedbacks are classified into a form which provides important information about Z-mode negative impacts and suggestions. All collected data are conducive to answering the two research questions:1),What are negative impacts of autonomous learning class on students, teachers and class management?2), How to avoid these negative effects? According to three main features of Z-mode class: student file, group-based activity and peer’s teaching, the author designed three main specific questions, and interviewed three students whose English ranges from poor, average and excellent. As a result, the contribution of this paper is three-fold. Firstly, the teaching model of self-directed learning should be carried out according to classroom discipline, teaching content, student characteristics. It should be integrated with traditional classes, which provides a transition for students and teachers. Secondly, in autonomous learning class, the teacher’s tasks are not diminished but increased. Autonomous learning class not only requires students to develop abilities to learn autonomously, but also needs teachers to have abilities to guide students to master autonomous learning strategies. Thirdly, in a cooperative autonomous learning class, students with low self-monitoring ability will easily influence the validity of the class.Although these issues appear on the Z-mode class, they can be references for other autonomous learning classes. Therefore, two implications can be deduced from the upshot of this research. For one thing, this study is beneficial to improve Z class, and enrich autonomous learning theories. On the other hand, they may provide a few sound suggestions on how to facilitate the development of autonomous learning class in Chinese pedagogical context.