An Empirical Study Of Metacognitive Strategy Training In Vocational College English Reading Instruction

Metacognition refers to one’s knowledge concerning one’s own cognitive processor anything related to them(J. H. Flavell，1976). Its essence is the cognition aboutcognitive activities. Metacognitive strategy is defined as “the strategy of self-monitoring,adjusting and guiding by learner in learning process”. In all of learning strategies, it is astrategy with higher levels. Once a learner owns proper metacognitive consciousness,s/he will lay plans in accordance with learning process, choose and adjust learningstrategy, and revise after learning process is done. Metacognitive strategy also plays animportant part in reading. Reading is a complex cognitive activity, and through it,students can rectify improper reading behaviors and strategies, overcome anxiety, boostconfidence in reading and cultivate ability of autonomous learning.According to Basic Requirements of English Education in Higher VocationalColleges promulgated by National Ministry of Education in2000, vocational collegestudents should give priority to the following seven skills:1) To understand the main purpose and cruces in passage.2) To comprehend the details in passage.3) To infer the meaning of new words from context.4) To make easy judgment and reasoning from context.5) To comprehend the writing purpose, author attitude and opinion.6) To draw the conclusion based on contents of passage.7) To lookup concerned information quickly.However in colleges, particularly in vocational colleges, students’ Englishreading ability is universal lower. They don’t master proper reading strategies,especially metacognitive strategy. The reason is that teachers in vocational colleges payparticular emphasis on examination-oriented training, aim at examination, and mainlyexplain vocabulary and grammar points. In English reading teaching, they ignore textanalysis, passage’s subject explaining, and students’ ability cultivating.The author chooses67participants from air service major in sophomore year ofWuhan Vocational Technical College as a case. Among which,34students areexperimental group members,33students are control group members. Both theexperimental and the control groups follow the normal syllabus. Moreover, the students in the experimental group also receive the metacognitive training in reading which lastsfor a semester. After training, the author analyzes their discrepancy of using strategiesaccording to post-test of questionnaire and reading comprehension exercise. Thepurpose of the study is trying to answer the research questions listed below:1How about situation of metacognitive strategies application in reading(pre-reading, in-reading, after reading) used by vocational college students?2Whether students in control team and those in experimental team havediscrepancies after training?3If there are discrepancies, where are they? And in what aspects do theyembody?The result of thesis shows that there is great difference in the scores between theexperimental group and control group (t=2.59, p<0.01). The students in theexperimental group have higher scores after training. It demonstrates that themetacognitive reading strategy training really has positive effects on students’ readingactivities.