Autonomous learning is a process of taking control of one’s learning. Despite extensive investigations on this issue, the implementation of autonomous learning in rural areas, which have many limitations, is still far from the spotlight. This study was aimed at exploring the learning autonomy in a rural area performed by secondary school students across socio-economic backgrounds in coping with English subject. Besides, it was also aimed at spelling out the challenges that students in the rural area faced in exercising their learning autonomy. Basic qualitative research was employed in the study, whereby an in-depth interview was held with four students representing different socio-economic backgrounds, namely business family, employee family, agriculturist family, and navvy family. The results unveiled that the students demonstrated a variety of ways in exercising their learning autonomy in English subject. The results also revealed that they encountered varied challenges in learning English autonomously. The variabilities of the ways and difficulties were predominantly influenced by their family backgrounds.