A Study On Chinese Non-English Majors' Metacognitive Strategies Use For Learner Autonomy

Learner autonomy has been generally recognized as the ultimate goal of education in the past few decades.Meanwhile,metacognitive strategies,considered as one of the important aspects of language learning strategies,play significant roles in achieving language proficiency and choosing learning strategies.In addition, metacognitive strategies are important index of autonomous learning.In recent years both metacognitive strategies and autonomous learning have been the focus of research in education.However,the author finds that her students' learner autonomy is not satisfactory in the daily teaching practice.Consequently,the author aims to investigate the two factors influencing her non-English major students' English study, metacognitive strategies and autonomous learning.The current study seeks to find out: a.the situation of non - English major students' metacognitive strategy awareness and metacognitive strategy use in learner autonomy in Capital University of Economy and Trade b.the difference between successful and unsuccessful students in terms of their metacognitive strategies c.metacognitive strategies' influence on learner autonomy.Totally 120 freshmen students from Capital University of Economy and Trade participated in the study.The experiment includes two parts:questionnaire and personal interview and SPSS is used to help the researcher to analyze the collected data.The major findings of the current study are listed below:Firstly,non-English major students in Capital University of Economy and Trade are well aware of the metacognitive strategy knowledge about planning,monitoring and evaluating.What's more,compared to learners' metacognitive strategy use frequency and their degree of learner autonomy,they demonstrate much higher level of metacognitive knowledge about strategies or metacognitive strategy knowledge.Secondly,the statistical results also show the same correlation that metacognitive strategies overlap with the measurements of learner autonomy to a great extent. Specifically speaking,they display a relatively higher degree of autonomy in planning and monitoring but tend to be a lower degree of autonomy in evaluating.Thirdly,successful learners have a tendency to use planning and monitoring strategies more frequently than unsuccessful learners.But both successful students and unsuccessful students are weak in terms of using evaluating strategies.Fourthly,with regard to the autonomous roles played by EFL learners,successful learners display a comparatively higher degree of autonomy outside class than unsuccessful learners and but they share a similar degree of autonomy in class.Last but not the least,in the specific Chinese EFL learning context,dominance of examinations in educational system,high value on accurate recitation and traditional respect for teachers have had great influence on learners.Based on the valuable findings obtained in this research,the author will put them into further teaching practice to foster learner autonomy.After an appropriate period of related training,the author feels it is necessary to do further action researches to investigate the differences between successful learners and unsuccessful learners.