An Empirical Study Of Autonomous-cooperative Learning Model In Junior School English Teaching

English is a compulsory course in a primary or middle school of China.English is taught hard by teachers and learned diligently by students,but its effectiveness has been discovered to be low.The reform of new curriculum has been on since 2001,and English Curriculum Standards of Compulsory Education in 2011 emphasized: “Teachers should arrange the contents and teaching steps reasonably and encourage students to study English by observing,imitating,experiencing,inquiring and displaying what have been taught,to create more opportunities for students to use English language,and thus students will be led how to learn English autonomously and cooperatively.” This is a challenge to the traditional teacher-orientated classroom teaching,which has not adapted to the needs of students' English learning.The ability of students' autonomous-cooperative learning should be paid attention to and improved gradually.The research tries to solve the three problems relating to autonomouscooperative learning:(1)How can the autonomous-cooperative learning model improve the students' English level?(2)How does the autonomous-cooperative learning model improve students' active participation and be beneficial to students' communicative competence?(3)What possible problems should be resolved in carrying out the autonomouscooperative learning model in English teaching?Based on the above issues,Class 9 and Class 18 in Grade 8 of Guiyang No.2 Experimental Middle School were selected as the research subjects.Questionnaire method,experimental methodology and observational method were carried in the research.First,a questionnaire was designed from the perspectives of the students' attitudes,motivation,habits,achievements of learning English as well as their social skills and self-confidence towards English learning.Secondly,students of the experimental class were divided into different groups and each group had six students.The autonomous-cooperative learning model was taught in experimental class.On the contrary,the controlled class was not divided into groups and the traditional English teaching model was taught for students.Also the class performance of the students in the experimental class and the controlled class was recorded in detail.The classroom teaching was adjusted appropriately if desired.Finally the questionnaires and the results of the mid-term and final examination of students in the two classes were collected to analyze and compare by Excel and SPSS.The results showed that the autonomous-cooperative learning model encouraged students to improve their abilities by role playing,group activity and forms of cooperation in classroom teaching,and students learned English autonomously by observation,imitation and discussions.It effectively stimulated students' interest in English learning and improved their learning attitude.It changed students' learning style and was very useful for developing harmonious,democratic and equal relationships between teachers and students.