A Study On The Designing Of Autonomous Homework In Senior High School English Teaching And Its Efficiency In Practice

Since the 1970 s,western linguists and educators have shifted their focus of attention from teachers' teaching to students' learning and a great number of studies have been conducted from the students' perspective.As an important extension and improvement of classroom teaching,homework has attracted more and more western researchers' attention and has shown great potential.In China,the theoretical research on homework is still weak.Although the curriculum reform has been in progress for decades,and breakthroughs has also been made in curriculum construction and classroom teaching,the efficiency of homework has become the bottleneck and the key of deepening curriculum reform.So it is urgent to carry out research and practice on homework.The nature of the present study is an quasi-experimental one,aiming to test the efficiency of autonomous English homework in senior high school English teaching and learning.In the process of the quasi-experiment,the data and information are collected through questionnaires,some interviews and two language proficiency tests.Sixty liberal arts students in Grade 2 at Susong No.2 Senior High School participate in this experiment.SPSS 24.0 is employed to analyze the data:(1)Descriptive statistics are computed to summarize the students' attitudes,beliefs and behaviors related to English homework before and after the experiment;(2)Pearson correlations analysis is conducted to examine relationship between English achievement and the use of autonomous English homework;(3)Paired Sample T-tests are carried out to check the differences in students' English achievement before and after the experiment between female and male students.The final results indicate:(1)Significant changes have taken place in students' attitudes,beliefs and behaviors related to English homework before and after the experiment;(2)Significant positive correlations exist between the use of autonomous English homework and their English achievement;(3)Autonomous English homework helps to improve students' ability to think independently and learn independently,which is conducive to selective learning and independent learning;(4)No significant differences in English achievement are found between female and male students after the experiment.It is suggested that an insufficient understanding on the importance of English homework and its designing in senior high school teaching and learning should be a real concern of English teachers.How to design and assign effective English homework and improve its efficiency should be a new task for English teachers in senior high schools.