A Study On Effectiveness Of CAI In Enhancing Learner Autonomy In Senior Schools

The concept of “autonomous learning” first appeared with the development oflife-long and independent learning skills. It is an important concern in the field ofeducation and psychology. There are two objectives of foreign language teaching: oneis to help learners to acquire communicative skills and the other is to help themacquire autonomy. CAI (Computer Aided Instruction) can expose students toabundant learning materials, which may help learners improve their learningefficiency on their own. In addition, teachers can carry on various teaching activitiesvia CAI, such as communicating with the students online, giving and correctingassignments online, etc. With the widespread application of multimedia and onlineresources to English teaching, students, including high school students, need tonecessarily acquire the ability of autonomous learning to adapt themselves to the newteaching process and learning environment. However, there exist some problems inEnglish language teaching and learning which may eventually lead to a low efficiencyof students in autonomous learning.This thesis reports on a study that aims to enhance senior school learners’English learning autonomy by means of computer aided instruction.A CAI and autonomous learning related review is first presented in this thesis.The definition of the learner autonomy and elements affecting learner autonomy arediscussed.The experiment, which lasted one school year, took four classes of students inNo.5Middle School of Zhangqiu as subjects. In the two experimental classes, CAIwas incorporated into the English teaching, and students in the other two controlclasses had no access to CAI. Further more, two questionnaires, before and after theexperiment, involving students’ learning motivation, goal setting, metacognitiveability, and learning strategy, were designed to investigate their ability of learnerautonomy from experimental classes and controlled classes.The questionnaires revealed that the learner autonomy from the4classes werealmost the same as that before the experiment, and that after the experiment, striking differences were shown by statistical analysis between the subjects from both classesin terms of their learner autonomy. Students from the experimental classes got higherscores compared with those from the control classes. It suggests that CAI model ishelpful in developing learners’ autonomous learning habit and in improving learners’learning achievement as well.It is hoped that the findings of this study will have some implications for highschool English teaching.