Process-Eliciting Writing Based On Metacognitive Strategy For Vocational College Students

Effective English writing has long been a challenge in English language teaching. The two major theoretical approaches-----the Product Approach and Process Approach are not immune to being criticized. The former is criticized for its emphasis on form over the content and the latter is criticized for focusing on the process but neglecting the task and the audience for whom the text is ultimately written. Therefore, it is urgent for the teachers to have a new try in English writing teaching.With the development of cognitive psychology, metacognition has drawn more and more researchers and educators'attention and provides a new perspective for EFL writing. Metacognitive theory mainly includes metacognitive knowledge as well as metacognitive strategy. Among all the learning strategies, metacognitive strategy, like the CEO of a company, is a higher-order executive skill which includes planning, monitoring and evaluating. Once learners have a good command of metacognitive strategy, they will become more independent and autonomous and will be more capable of planning, monitoring and evaluating their learning process and thus become efficient learners.Metacognitive theory is influential in that some experiments have been carried out to verify the training effects of metacognitive strategy on learning specific skills. However, little has been reported about corresponding metacognitive researches in writing skills and there is void of study on vocational college students'writing.As a result, the author tried a new way of writing teaching approach--- Process-Eliciting Writing Based on Metacognitive Strategy for Vocational College Students. An empirical study was conducted which intended to investigate the effect of metacognitive strategy training on students'writing performance in the hope of finding an optimal teaching approach for vocational college English teachers. This approach springs from the Process-Eliciting Teaching Approach which is based on the latest results of modern psychology and attaches great importance to students'cognitive process, especially to the process of learners'thinking. This teaching approach really embodies the teaching idea"student-centered"and is targeted to foster students'metacognitive strategy, monitoring and evaluating abilities and to enhance metacognitive experience. Therefore, this study is of great significance theoretically and practically.The author carried out a pilot empirical study about the implementation of process-eliciting based on metacognitive strategy training to EFL writing by following O'Malley and Chamot's CALLA mode among 86 non-English major students of Laiwu Vocational College. In this study, the author probes into four research questions:(1) Can the process-eliciting writing teaching approach based on metacognitive strategy training improve vocational college students'actual writing performance?(2) Can this kind of writing teaching approach contribute to students'positive writing experience?(3) Does this kind of writing teaching approach have different effects on male and female students'writing performance?(4) Which has greater effect on students'actual writing performance, the process-eliciting writing teaching approach based on metacognitive strategy training or students'language ability?The findings from both quantitative and qualitative analyses reveal that the process-eliciting writing teaching approach based on metacognitive strategy training has positive effect on writing performance: (1) Students of the experimental group have outperformed the students of the control one in their writing performance; (2) After this training, male students have made greater progress than female students have done which means metacognitive strategy training has different effects on male and female students'writing performance; (3) This teaching approach has helped students to have positive writing experience; enhance their writing awareness of autonomy and improve their basic writing skills lexically and grammatically; (4) Both the writing approach training and students'language ability have main effects on students'actual writing performance and reach the significant level.According to the findings of the research, the author proposes some pedagogical implications: (1) The necessity of enriching students'positive writing experience; (2) The indispensability of enhancing students'all-around metacognitive ability as well as their metacognitive awareness in English writing; (3) The feasibility of improving writing via reading; (4) The significance of strengthening students'writing process and self-monitoring; (5) The importance of stressing students'basic writing knowledge; (6) The effectiveness of explicit metacognitive strategy training and CALLA Mode.