On The Application Of WebQuest In Learning Of Metacognitive Writing Strategy

WebQuest is developed by Professor Borne·Dodge and Professor Tom·March in the year of 1995, and both of the two are experts of Educational Technology in Santiago University. Web means the internet, Quest means to inquire and to search for. People can easily get the meaning of WebQuest in this way:An inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the internet. Basically speaking, WebQuest is an instructional procedure or learning plan. Depending on the complexity of tasks, WebQuest plan can be as short as one course or as long as one week even one month. Learners need to actively participate in certain pre-designed activities so as to complete the pre-given tasks through analysis and synthesis of abundant resources.Metacognition refers to a persons'cognition about cognition. Metacognition plays an important role in language acquisition especially in writing. Researches have shown that metacognition can be taught to learners and metacognitive strategies can be trained. Among the researches on metacognitive strategy training, O'Malley and Chamot's five-step strategy training is the most frequently employed. By referring to O'Malley and Chamot's five-step mode, this paper mainly explores the effectiveness of applying WebQuest in the training of metacognititive strategies.Under the guidance of WebQuest theory and constructivist learning theory, the experimenter has designed the three-month WebQuest-based metacognitive strategy learning activity and made it into practice in a Higher Vocational College in Hunan Province. By referring to O'Malley and Chamot's training steps, this study designed preparation, presentation and practice in the same way for both of the two classes. But different extracurricular activities are distributed to the learners in the steps of evaluation and extension. Students of control group were required to report their understanding of metacognitive writing strategies in the form of oral presentation; while the experimental group were required to report in the form of WebQuest. The results are given as follows:(1) Integrating WebQuest construction into metacognitive strategy learning steps is feasible and it is possible for learners to participate into the construction of WebQuest. WebQuests work more effectively than what traditional extracurricular activities do in strategy learning especially in the evaluating steps and extending steps. (2) The WQEL program enhanced learners'ability to plan, adjust, and evaluate their own writing and also improves students'English writing preference and performance.(3) The acceptability of WQML is higher than what is expected and WQML has strengthened learner autonomy.