A Study On Cultivating Students' Autonomous Learning Ability In A Junior High School

The new English teaching curriculum requires teachers to change their ideas,strengthen their guidance of students' learning,help students optimize the ways of learning,and ultimately enhance students' autonomous learning ability to help students achieve the goal of life-long leaning in the future.A previous study by the author shows that junior high school students do not have a strong awareness of autonomous learning and that they do not know how to make goals and plans or how to monitor their learning process.Based on the current situation,this thesis focuses on the training of students' autonomous learning ability in a junior high school.Three research questions are asked: 1)After the training,can the English achievements of the experimental classes be improved? 2)After the training,can the students' learning self-confidence be enhanced? 3)After the training,can the students' autonomous learning ability be improved?In order to answer these three questions,the author carried out an experiment in eight classes in Grade 7 in Jijiazhuang Middle School,a rural school in Northern China.In the two experimental classes,the author adopted the teaching mode of combining classroom teaching with training of autonomous learning ability,while in the control classes,the author only taught lessons without any training of autonomous learning.The experiment lasted about one semester.The results show that after training,the achievements of the experimental classes are better than that in the control classes and that most of students in the experimental classes are more confident and willing to learn English than before.Also,students can make reasonable goals and plans,manage learning time effectively,timely conduct self-evaluation,and use and improve learning strategies etc.It implies that autonomous learning ability can be cultivated in the classroom.