An Empirical Study On The Effects Of Self-evaluation On English Achievements Of Junior High School Students Under Autonomous Learning

Autonomous learning has always been one of the hot issues in the educational development. Various autonomous learning activities have been carried out in colleges at home, with relatively good results. “Note-guided” learning, as a form of autonomous learning in junior high schools, has already been widely used nowadays. Metacognitive strategies are commonly considered as the effective way of promoting autonomous learning efficiency, and many scholars have made researches on the positive influences of metacognitive strategies on English autonomous learning. This study attempted to explore the effects of self-evaluation on junior high school students’ English achievements, through instructing students to employ self-evaluation under “note-guided” learning.This study selected 52 students in the Eighteenth Junior High School in Jinzhou and a 16-week self-evaluation treatment was carried out with the purpose of exploring the effects of self-evaluation on junior high school students’ English achievements. This study attempted to answer two research questions: 1) What effects does self-evaluation have on junior high school students’ English achievements under “note-guided” learning? 2) What effects does self-evaluation have on English achievements of students with different English proficiency in junior high school under “note-guided” learning?Pang’s(2003) self-evaluation checklist, revised on the basis of the typical features of “note-guided” learning, was adopted in this study. After self-evaluation was conducted, comparisons were made between students’ scores of pre-test and post-test, with the purpose of investigating the effects of self-evaluation on students’ English achievements. Data for this study were collected from students’ English final tests of the first semester and the second semester in Grade One. Descriptive analysis, paired-sample t-tests and independent-sample t-tests were used to process the data.Results of this study show that: 1) Self-evaluation has positive effects on students’ English achievements and, to a great extent, it helps promote junior high school students’ English achievements. 2) Effects of self-evaluation on English achievements of junior high school students with different English proficiency vary significantly. Students with different English proficiency all get improvements after the treatment. Effects of self-evaluation on English achievements of students with high English proficiency are smaller than those of students with low English proficiency.Conclusions of this study prove that self-evaluation is effective in promoting “note-guided” learning. This study not only assures students of the efficiency of English learning under “note-guided” autonomous learning, but also offers implications for both students and teachers in facilitating learning efficiency.