An Action Research On Promoting Junior High School Students' English Autonomous Learning Ability Through Reflective Learning

The English Curriculum Standard for Compulsory Education(2017)has indeed proposed the development of students' ability of autonomous learning.Nowadays Students are supposed to be more capable of planning,implementing,reflecting,evaluating and adjusting their learning.Accordingly,the cultivation of students' autonomous learning has become one of the main tasks of Junior High Schools' English teaching.Reflection serving as an important part of autonomous learning is also a necessary link for the growth of learners.However,most researches on reflection in our country mostly focus on the reflective teaching of teachers.Most of the related researches are theoretical research.With the further expansion of the research on reflective theory,reflective autonomous learning has gained much attention.However,there are few empirical studies in this field in China,and relevant researches are mostly focusing on college students,most of which pitifully ignores the subject of compulsory education.Therefore,this thesis is to take junior high school students as the research object,which aims to explore whether reflective learning can effectively improve junior high school students' autonomous learning ability in English.In order to gain an insight of the above issues,this thesis adopted the action research method to explore the current junior high school students' level of autonomous learning ability and reflective learning ability.Meanwhile the role of reflective learning applications for autonomous learning ability were further discussed and analyzed.At the beginning of the action research,the author conducted a questionnaire survey of 55 students who are enrolled in a junior high school in Hefei,Anhui Province.The analysis of questionnaire data shows that students demonstrated a low level of ability in both autonomous learning and reflective learning.So the author selects a number of students as interviewees.According to the questionnaire data,interview results and relevant theoretical references,a 12-week action research plan was formulated,which was divided into three phases.In the first stage(1-4 weeks),the author develop the first round of training experiments by introduce theories of autonomous learning and reflective learning to students to;collect relevant data and analyze it;guide students to applylearning strategies and reflective strategies;encourage students to reflect on themselves by learning journals and error sets.In the second stage(5-8 weeks),analyze the first round of experimental data;reflect on the findings;adjust the teaching model;improve the training methods.At this stage,group activities are introduced,and students are required to fill in the reflective record form when each module is completed.In the third stage(9-12weeks),the adjusted culture method is applied to the third round of culture experiments,and the entire action research is summarized and conclusions are drawn.At this stage,the author try to use the guidance case to develop students' self-preparation and reflection behaviors,while the students continue to record the learning journals and arrange the error sets.To explore the results of the study,the author conducted a questionnaire before and after the action research on students' autonomous learning ability and reflective learning ability.The data were analyzed by SPSS 20.0 to obtain quantitative data.Through data analysis,this action research was evaluated and introspected and the following conclusions were drawn:1.At the present stage,junior high school students have a low level of English autonomous learning ability,which is mainly manifested in the following six aspects:The level of learning motivation and attitude,planning and monitoring,self-evaluation and reflection,the use of learning strategies,communication skills,and the use of extra-curricular resources.2.At present junior high school students have low awareness and ability in reflective learning in English.The specific performance is that students have more unconscious behaviors than conscious behaviors.In other words,their application of habitual action is more than their application of understanding,reflection and critical reflection.3.After this action research,students' reflective learning ability has been significantly improved.Through data analysis,it can be concluded that the application of reflective strategies has effectively improved students' level of English autonomous learning.The reason why the use of extra-curricular resources has not been significantly improved is that the lack of extracurricular learning resources in the learning environment of the subjects.This action research has solved the problem of junior high school students' reflective learning and low autonomous learning ability to a certain extent,and summed up strategies which can promote relevant ability training.The experimental results basically reached the expected goal.However,there are many shortcomingssuch as the small sample size and the short experimental period.Later related research should expand the sample and extend the experimental period.It is also necessary to take students' age,English learning years,society,school,family and other factors into consideration.