A Study On The Effects Of Stratified Learning Plan On Cultivating Junior Middle School Students' English Learning Autonomy

The Chinese National English Course Standard issued in 2012 claims that English teaching in junior middle school should optimize learning ways and improve students' autonomous learning ability; the ultimate goal of teaching is to develop students' autonomous learning ability and lay a sound foundation for students'lifelong learning. Under this background, learning plan teaching approach has been advocated and carried out all around many schools in recent years. However, with the rapid development of learning plan, many problems also appear. Many learning plans are for the whole class with the same objects, the same activities and the same evaluation, regardless of different learning situation of students on different levels. Such a learning plan can only suit part of students, not all. If an objective or a task is too difficult to obtain, learning interest can hardly be motivated, and their confidence is discouraged. So, in order to overcome the shortcomings of learning plan, the stratified learning plan come into being. Stratified learning plan is the product of a combination of stratified teaching and learning plan, which has different objectives, tasks, evaluation methods and so on for students of different levels.The teaching experiment lasted nearly four months from March to July,2015. A total of 96 participants in Grade 7 are from two natural parallel classes in Gongbei Middle School. In the experiment class, students are divided into three levels:level A, level B and Level C. Through analyzing the qualitative and quantitative data of questionnaires, interviews, classroom observation, and tests with the help of the software SPSS 17.0, the research aims to examine whether the application of stratified learning plan can have better effects on improving students' autonomous learning ability and learning achievement than ordinary learning plan and the different effects on students of different levels. Also, through the interview, the author tries to figure out what are the advantages and disadvantages of the stratified learning plan in students' view.In this thesis, first, the author will mainly review the theoretical achievements of the stratified learning plan and the learning autonomy and their relationships which lay foundation for the research. Next she will introduce how this research is designed and carried out, involving the detailed description of research questions, participants, the instruments, and research procedures. Then she will analyze the results of the experiment, including the explanation of the three research questions in sequence. Finally, through analyzing the research results, the author will try to make some suggestions for front-line teachers to have a better understanding of the stratified learning plan and can design the most suitable learning plan which can improve students'autonomous learning ability and their academic achievement. Also, some limitations of the research are listed in order to improve them in further study.Based on the data analysis of the experiment, the following conclusions are drawn:First, compared with the control class, students'English autonomous learning ability is improved more through using the stratified learning plan. For different levels' students, the effects on them are more or less different due to their different characteristics.Second, compared with the control class, students' English learning achievement are improved more through using the stratified learning plan. For different levels' students, the English learning achievement of Level B students have the largest improvement.Third, in terms of the advantages, many participants think that the stratified learning plan can inspire their learning interest and improve their confidence. Also, the learning objectives of the stratified learning plan are very specific and the stratified learning plan can meet the needs of different levels'students. However, there are also some problems because of the unpractical design and unpractical implementation of the stratified learning plan.