English Vocabulary Teaching In Senior Middle School Under The Guidance Of The Theory Of Learner Autonomy

In recent years, learner autonomy has been a heated topic within the field of foreign language teaching, and the concern with English learning has shifted from the teachers’ teaching to the students’ learning. The New English Curriculum Standards sets he main goal as "developing students’ learning strategies and cultivating their ability of autonomous learning". Some experts even claim there is not any teaching task more important than “making the students independent, autonomous and efficient learners".Vocabulary is one of the three major components that constitute English language knowledge skills.It is also the foundation of all English language skills. So vocabulary lays a crucial role in foreign language instruction. Just as McCarthy(1980) claims that no matter how good one’s grammar is and how beautiful one’s pronunciation is, but if one has no adequate vocabulary to express one’s own feelings or to understand others’ opinions, one still cannot communicate with others in this language. Harmer(1990) also points out that if we compare language structure as the sketch of language, vocabulary is the thing that provides important organs as well as blood and flesh. However, the two major problems in nowadays English teaching are: English vocabulary learning is passive and the students haven’t mastered adequate and efficient vocabulary learning methods.The thesis first introduces the theory of Learner Autonomy, language learning strategies and vocabulary learning strategies. Then the writer puts forward a practical autonomous vocabulary learning model to explore how to change the students’ learning attitudes and consequently improve their vocabulary learning ability Through the model,we attempt to teach the students how to learn and how to monitor their learning process so as to improve English learning and finally help to lay a solid foundation for learning in all of their life and for their sustainable developments.The writer conducts an experiment in No.1Middle School to explore if the autonomous vocabulary learning model can be effective. In this study, 147 English learners are from 2 average classes. Class 11 is the experimental group and Class 12 is the control group. The participants in the experimental group receive the autonomous vocabulary learning model while the comparison group receive the traditional way of vocabulary teaching model. Both groups fill out a pre-post questionnaire and finish a pre-post English vocabulary test before and after the experiment. The experimental data show that the autonomous vocabulary learning model can change the students’ learning habits and make a more significant improvement in vocabulary learning. As a result, vocabulary learning can also increase overall English proficiency...