【正文】 or China published by the People‘s Education Press. According to autonomous learning theory, the author uses questionnaires, teaching tests, classroom experiment and interview to discover and get rid of the bad facts on autonomous learning, collect and use positive facts so that they serve autonomous teaching—— Learningplan Guiding in order to cultivate the students‘ motivation, arouse their learning interests, and help them form good learning habits, polish up learning strategies and foster the ability of autonomous learning. Therefore, in the classroom teaching, the author try to create a relaxing democratic and harmonious classroom atmosphere, arouse interest to motivate autonomous learning, optimize autonomous strategies, advocate the bination of cooperative learning and autonomous learning and develop students‘ ability of reflection and selfassessment. By doing these, students bee the owners of classroom learning, which gives an guarantee to studentscenter and improves the students‘ autonomous learning abilities. After the teaching experiment, through the parisons between the pretests and the posttests between the experimental class and control class, it is proved that autonomous learning model is very helpful to enhance the students‘ autonomous learning ability. Key words: autonomous learning, autonomous teaching, autonomous learning ability 3 Contents Chinese abstract ……………………………………………… ..ⅳ English abstract ……………………………………………… ..ⅴ Contents …………………………………………………………… ⅵ Chapter 1 Introduction………………………………………… .1 Background ……………………………………………………………… 1 Features of rural high school students……………………………………… 3 Necessity of the study…………… ………………………………………… .4 Requirements for autonomous learning in the National English Curriculum for Senior High School……………………………………………… .. ……… 5 Layout of the thesis ……………………………………………… .. ……… .6 Chapter 2 Literature review ……………………………… .. ……… ..8 The research on autonomous learning in the west ……………… .. ……… ..8 The research on autonomous learning in China ……………… .. ………… ..9 Comment ……………………………………………… .. ……… .................11 Chapter 3 Theoretical Foundation…………… .. ……… ....................12 Definitions of autonomous learning …………… .. ……… ............................12 Features of autonomous learning …………… ...……… .................................15 Theoretical background of autonomous learning ……… ...............................16 Humanism Theory on autonomous learning ……… ................................16 Constructivism Theory on autonomous learning … ....................................18 Cognitive Theory on autonomous learning … ..........................................19 Metacognitive Theory on autonomous learning .......................................20 Autonomous learning model in Classroom: LearningPlan Guiding Model… ...22 Requirements for autonomous learning in the National English Curriculum for senior high school …………… .. ……… ..................................25 The Factors affecting autonomous learning … .. ……… .................................27 Principles of fostering autonomous learning … .. ……… ...............................30 ⅵ Chapter4 Experiment on LA in ZunhuaXindianzi Senior High School ……………………………………………… .. ……… ...........................40 Hypothesis…………………………………… .. ……… ..................................40 Subject …………………………………… .. ……… .......................................40 Methods …………………………………… .. ……… ..................................41 Questionnaire …………………………… .. ……… ....................................41 Tests…… ……………………… .. ……… ...................................................42 Interview…………………………… .. ……… ............................................43 Classroom experiment .. ………… .. ……… ................................................43 Sample lesson ………… .. ……… ................................................................43 Procedure ………… .. ……… ............................................................................51 Data collection…… .. ……… .............................................................................52 Chapter 5 Results and Analysis ............................................................53 Results........................................................... .....................................................53 Analysis....................................................... .......................................................55 Analysis of the data from questionnaires on autonomous learning concept .... ......................................................................................................................55 Analysis of the data from questionnaires on autonomous learning ability. ..........................................................................................................................56 Analyses of the data from tests.......... ................................................................57 Pretest Analysis of the data from pretest..................................................58 Posttest Analysis of the data from posttest...............................................58 Comparison............................. ...................................................................58 Analysis of the data from the interview.............................................................59 ⅶ