An Investigation On The Correlation Of English Teachers’ Teaching Autonomy And High School Students’ Learning Autonomy

Along with Holec’s Autonomy in Foreign Language Learning was published in1981, the concept of learner autonomy has come into view and gradually become thefocus of relevant research. As the rise of the concept of learner autonomy and theincreasing researches on learner autonomy, researchers find out that the strengtheningon learner autonomy doesn’t mean the weakening of teacher autonomy. On the contrary,researches prove that teachers do play a positive role in the process of cultivatingstudents’ ability of autonomous learning.Having collected and analyzed the related document literature, this dissertationintroduces the current development situations of teacher autonomy and learnerautonomy both abroad and in China and defines the related concepts. Autonomouslearning is on the theoretical basis of cognitive learning theories, constructivist theoriesof learning and humanistic psychology, so this dissertation presents students’ decisivefunctions in the teaching and learning process and the relations among teacherautonomy, learner autonomy and language proficiency.The present research proposes two hypotheses. They are:1) Teacher autonomydoes have positive effects on learner autonomy to some extent.2) Learners withautonomous learning ability can make faster progress in language proficiency than thosewithout learner autonomy.By using both quantitative and qualitative analysis, this thesis carries out aninvestigation in proving the hypotheses that the author proposes. The subjects in thepresent research include213high school students from grade two of four differentclasses and15Chinese high school English teachers. Instruments that are used in thisstudy consist of questionnaire (questionnaire for teachers and questionnaire forstudents), interview, classroom observation and mid-term and final examinationperformances. In the analysis of the relationships between learner autonomy andlanguage proficiency, these213students are divided into three groups based on their examination performances: high language proficiency group (HLP), moderate languageproficiency group (MLP) and low language proficiency group (LLP). Questionnaire onlearner autonomy and questionnaire on teacher autonomy were distributed among213students and15teachers separately for quantitative analyses. The15teachers were alsoinvolved in the interviews about teacher autonomy for qualitative analyses, duringwhich the classroom observation was still preceding in the process of classroomteaching and learning in order to collect necessary data for the two hypotheses.The research aims at investigating the current situation of English teachers’teaching autonomy and high school students’ learning autonomy. The findings are asfollows according to the analyses.1) This research confirms the proposal proposed byprevious researchers, that is, the correlation between teacher autonomy and learnerautonomy is interdependent.2) Learner autonomy not only affects students’ academicperformance but also affects their lifelong development.3) Both teacher autonomy andlearner autonomy contribute to the development of English teaching theoretically andpractically.4) Learner autonomy maintains close contact with language proficiency. Allof these above could provide theoretical and practical significance for further study.