Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background of the research
In China, English is taught as a foreign language, and in many English classes,teachers are regarded as the center of the class, and their role as classroom controllers areemphasized. Because of the globalization of the economy, as well as internationalcommunication, English has shown its great use in school learning and future job huntingfor Chinese students. It becomes urgent how to make use of learners’ potential andcultivate life long learning ability. The idea of autonomy in language learning has occurredto language researchers, and many of them have devoted themselves to the study ofautonomous learning.“The New English Course Standard for the Basic Education Stage” issued by Ministryof Education in 2003 puts forward “developing the student in English learning” as the maingoal of English teaching and learning. Besides, The Outline of Mid-Long Development ofEducation(2010—2020) stresses that High school education should pay attention to thecultivation of students’ autonomous learning ability, must take the student as the main body,with the teacher as the supervisor, give enough room for students' initiative and promoteeach student’s active development. However, in middle school, English teaching still focuson teachers’ teaching rather than students’ learning. It ignores the students’ individualdifferences and thus produces passive learners, and ineffective teaching and learning tomaximum. In English learning, both teachers and students realize some inadequacies, forexample, higher marks in exams are emphasized, while students learning potentialsneglected. Also in classroom learning, students are busy taking notes and after class, theyare busy finishing teachers’ assignment. Training in listening or speaking ability arecompletely neglected. Students seldom have the chances to use English in real situation.They don’t care about things like learning strategies or autonomous learning.
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1.2 Purpose of the research
So far, there have been some popular teaching approaches of reading. It’s easy to findthat none of them is totally effective and desirable for reading instruction for each of themhas advantages and disadvantages. In addition, these researches are mainly about how toteach reading, but pay little attention to the nature of reading.What’s more, as reading is a complicated process which involves many factors fromdifferent aspects namely, the reader, reading text, the teacher, the nature of reading and soon. Due to such complexity and difficulty in English reading, few students have an interestin it. If the students’ motivation for reading is to get a high mark, it cannot arouse orstimulate their interest. As we know, students will not devote their efforts to learning aforeign language if they have no proper motivation or desire to learn it. Therefore, how tomotivate and involve students in English reading autonomously is very important. Since alllearning can in any case only be carried out by the students themselves. Focusing onstudents means that students should take the dominant position in classroom teaching andthe responsibility of their own learning shift from teacher to themselves. The purpose ofthe study is to find out whether the autonomous learning model (AL) can solve theproblems.
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Chapter Two Literature review
2.1 Autonomous learning
It can betraced back to ideas of personal autonomy in contemporary western political philosophyand it could be argued that our present understanding of the importance of autonomy inlanguage learning is ultimately grounded in the belief that personal autonomy is somehowimportant to our existence as social beings. The following are definitions given byimportant writers.In 1981, Holec defined autonomy as ‘the ability to take charge of one’s learning’. Hefurther explained the ability in five aspects, 1. to determine the objectives; 2. to define thecontents and progress; 3. to select methods and techniques to be used; 4. to monitor theprocedure of acquisition; 5. to evaluate what has been acquired.According to Holec, learners’ decisions at successive stages of the learning processcan decide their learning. A successful autonomous learner makes all significant decisionsin the course of his own learning, and he can manage and organize his own learning. Forstudents who are learning English language, it means they should be in charge of their ownlearning.Little (1991) argues that “autonomy is not exclusively or even primarily a matter ofhow learning is managed and organized:Essentially, autonomy is a capacity for detachment, critical reflection, decision-making, and independent action. It presupposes, but also entails, that the learnerwill develop a particular kind of psychological relation to the process and content of hislearning. The capacity for autonomy will be displayed both in the way the learner learnsand in the way he or she transfers what has been learned to wider contexts. (1991:4).
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2.2 Theoretical basis
Constructivism theory assumes that although the world is objective existence, theunderstanding of the world and meaning is to have each person to decide. It is based on itsown experience to construct and interpret reality. Textbook knowledge is only aphenomenon about various relatively reliable hypothesis rather than explaining reality“template”. “Each learner in his original experience system based on the new information to be encoded, construct their own understanding, but also the original knowledge andexperience to occur because the new adjustment and change.” (Feng, 2000:168)Thestudents’ knowledge of the “accept” can rely on his own to construct, based on hisexperience as the background to analyze the rationality of knowledge. It is not passiveinformation absorption, but the significance of the active construction. The building cannot be replaced by others.
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Chapter Three Research methodology .......17
3.1 Research hypotheses of the study.....17
3.2 Subjects......17
3.3 Instruments......18
3.3.1 Questionnaire ........18
3.3.2 Test papers .......18
3.3.3 Interview....18
3.4 Procedures .......19
3.5 Data collection ......23
Chapter Four Results and discussions........24
4.1 Data analysis of English reading tests ........ 24
4.2 Data analysis of questionnaire ....2
4.3 Data analysis of questionnaire on strategy........36
4.4 Results of interviews........39
Chapter Five Conclusion........41
5.1 Major findings of the study .........47
5.2 Pedagogical implications.......42
5.3 Limitations and recommendations .........43
Chapter Four Results and discussions
4.1 Data analysis of English reading tests
In this study, the aim of English reading test is to check whether the subjects’ readingachievement has improved after experiment, and by using SPSS to analyze the scores oftwo groups to see which teaching method is much better in improving learners’ readingcompetence. Table 4.1 shows the descriptive statistics of the means and the standard deviation ofthe pre-test in the control class and the experimental class. The control class has a readingcomprehension mean score of 20.00 with a standard deviation of 5.36, and theexperimental class has a mean score of 20.05 with a standard deviation of 4.76. The resultof group statistics indicates that there is no big difference between the control class andexperimental class at the beginning of the term. From the next table, that is table 4.2, an independent sample t-test is performed tocompare and describe the data. The corresponding significance level sig. (2-tailed) is 0.965,which is above significance level 0.05.There is no significant difference between the twoclasses.
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Conclusion
In terms of the result in the experiment, we have found positive answers to the threehypotheses of the study and they are quite obvious.Firstly, AL Model facilitates learners’ reading competence. By the independentsamples test of pre-test and post-test between control class and experimental classrespectively, it is drawn that although two groups are similar in reading ability at thebeginning of the term, the learners under the interactive approach is significantly differentfrom the students with traditional method in the reading competence. The correspondingsignificance level sig. (2-tailed) in the pre-test is 0.965, while in the post-test it is 0.03which is below 0.05. Besides, from the analysis of paired samples statistics of pre-test andpost-test of control class and experimental class respective, it can be clearly seen twogroups improves more in their reading ability after the training comparing with its ownprimitive state. However experimental class enhances greatly than that of the control class.The mean of pre-test and post-test in experiment class is 20.05 and 25.8. The sig. (2-tailed)is 0.00. That is to say the AL Model has a positive influence on student’s readingcompetence. Instead of the traditional teaching method which is a passive andteacher-center process, the AL Model adopts various classroom activities and techniquesand cultivates autonomous learning awareness. Thus AL Model is more effective thantraditional models in developing students’ reading proficiency and using Englishpractically.
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Reference (omitted)