Scholars at home and abroad have done extensive researches on how to guide students appropriately in their learning process in different aspects.

 Firstly, on principles and phrases of guided learning approach, M. David Merrill (2002) elaborates five first principles and four distinct phases of learning in his paper "First Principles of Instruction". Firstly, learning is promoted when learners are engaged in solving real-world problems. Secondly, learning is promoted when existing knowledge is activated as a foundation for new knowledge. Thirdly, learning is promoted when new knowledge is demonstrated to the learner. Fourthly, learning is promoted when new knowledge is applied by the learner. Fifthly, learning is promoted when new knowledge is integrated into the learner's world.

Secondly, on forms of guided learning approach, Clark & Blake (1997) indicates that learning is promoted when the structural features are carefully identified and explicitly mapped for the students. That explicate guidance focuses the learner's attention on relevant information in the task. 

Thirdly, on creating environments for guided learning approach, Fosnot (1989) advises a teacher not to take over thinking for the learner by telling the learner what to do or how to think, but rather teaching should be done by inquiring at the "leading edge” of the protege's thinking. Jonassen (1999) regards learning process as a process of problem solving. He suggests starting the learners with the tasks they know how to perform and gradually add task difficulty until they are unable to perform alone.

The idea of implementing “guided learning plan" in class was first put forward by teachers at Jinhua Number One Middle School in Zhejiang Province. Since then, scholars and researchers at home have done researches on "guided learning plan" and their researches are as follows. 

Li Lei (2009) gives his ideas in the article “Guided Learning Approach Based on Constructivism". According to constructivist theories of learning, he emphasizes that learning is the process of acquiring knowledge. Students should construct knowledge by themselves rather than simply accept ideas from teachers. In this process, teachers act as facilitators and prompters. They provide students with opportunities to explore and apply knowledge by students themselves. Zhang Shuguang and Chen Qisheng (2000) put forward the basic principles of compiling “guided learning plan” in their dissertation “Constructing Learner-Centered Teaching Plan and Cultivating Students' Self-learning Ability", and those principles include principle of guidance on learning, principle of exploration and principle of openness.

In recent years, increasing numbers of researches are under way to reform the traditional approach. The attempt of increasing learners’ automatic and cooperative awareness is reflected in many English teaching approaches. 

At the time, the teaching model of guided learning plan is supposed to be a method for improving learners’ automatic and cooperative awareness in English learning. It takes guidance as a main way, self-learning as the core，and aims at highly efficient learning. The pattern of guided learning plan aims to play teachers’ guiding roles and students’ participating roles fully. Since present studies focus much on the theoretical research, this paper is to study the guided learning plan from the practical perspective so as to improve the quality of English teaching through the research. The guided learning plan has been widely used in many middle schools at present. There are also many researches on English reading class. However, the application on English Listening and Speaking class need further research and discussion.