A Study Of The Correlation Between Classroom Environment And High School Students' Autonomous Learning Ability

Classroom environment is often defined as the shared perception of the environment by students or teachers.It is considered to be an important factor affecting students' cognitive and emotional outcome.In recent decades,there has been a great deal of research on classroom environment at home and abroad,among which college students' perception of classroom environment gains more discussion.Recently,a large number of scholars have begun to pay attention to the relationship between students' perception of classroom environment and their English autonomous learning ability.However,most research focus on college students and few empirical studies have taken senior school students into consideration.In view of this,the present study is conducted with the purpose of exploring the relationship between senior high school students' perception of English classroom environment and their English autonomous learning ability so as to put forward some feasible pedagogical suggestions on English teaching in senior high school.220 senior high school students in High School Attached to Shandong Normal University were involved in the study.Two questionnaires including the “Middle School English classroom Environment scale”(Liu Liyan,Liu Yongbing,2010)and the "Middle School English Autonomous Learning ability scale"(Yuan Juanjuan,2018)as well as interviews were adopted as the research instruments.Ten participants involved in the study were selected randomly and interviewed after class.SPSS 20.0 was applied to analyze the data collected from the two questionnaires and qualitative analysis was conducted for the data obtained from the interview.The present study aims to figure out the general situation of senior high school students' perception on English classroom environment and their English autonomous learning ability;whether English level exert effect on students' perception of English classroom environment and their English autonomous learning ability;whether there is a significant correlation between senior high school students' perception of English classroom environment and their English autonomous learning ability.Results and major findings based on the questionnaires and interviews can be summarized as follows:1)Senior high school students' overall perception of English classroomenvironment is relatively good.Students with different English proficiency have different perceptions of the English classroom environment.The differences are mainly reflected in the perception of teacher support,cooperation and task orientation.2)The overall situation of senior high school students' English autonomous learning ability is at a medium level.Students with different English proficiency own different autonomous learning abilities,which are mainly reflected in making learning plans,monitoring and evaluating the learning process and so on.3)There is a correlation between senior high school students' perception and their English autonomous learning ability.The correlation between students' perception of psychological environment(task orientation)and their English autonomous learning ability is the strongest,followed by social environment(teacher support,class order,cooperation,student cohesiveness).On the basis of the above findings,some pedagogical implications about fostering senior school students' English autonomous learning ability are put forward.Limitations of the study and suggestions for further study are also proposed.