Effects Of Teachers' Mediation On Students' Autonomous English Learning Ability In High Schools Of Remote Towns

Since 1990 s, the focus of foreign language teaching study has shifted from teachers to students. It is widely believed that the potency of learner autonomy can prompt students' active involvement in learning knowledge.Meanwhile, it also exerts direct and important influence on educators' teaching work. However, there are two extreme phenomena in English teaching field with the development of times: One is that teachers' role has been badly weakened. It seems that students have got the right of autonomy while teaching task has been thrown to private teachers; The other one is that teachers intervene in learners' study overly, ignoring their learner autonomy entirely and it is more prominent in remote towns. Therefore, how to play teachers' role properly to stimulate learners' potential power of autonomic learning and help them form good habit of autonomic learning gradually becomes a demanding educational problem that needs to be solved quickly.This paper is mainly based on the Mediation Theory proposed by the representatives of Social Interactionism-- L. S. Vygotsky and R. Feuerstein,discussing teachers' mediating influences on students' autonomic learning ability. Furthermore, it raises some tips to enhance the ability of learner autonomy and improve the poor condition of middle school students' autonomic ability in remote towns. This research combines questionnaire andinterview to investigate 300 senior high school students in grade 1 and 2 of Dongguan middle school in Xing County, Lvliang City, Shanxi Province on their autonomous learning ability under teacher's mediating function.The result of this research shows that students in some remote towns are not good at learning autonomously. For instance, most of the students do nothing after finishing their homework, and even part of them have a misunderstanding of the concept that they consider doing homework as autonomic learning. What's more, many students reflect that their teachers have not given them enough guidance on autonomic learning, and they hope they can get more help from teachers on learning plan, learning strategy and learning material. Therefore, it is advised that teachers should give students help through creating relaxed study environment, promoting emotional exchange between teacher and students, making learning contract and so on.