An Empirical Study Of The Influences Of Metacognitive Knowledge On Ma Students’ Reading Comprehension

Metacognition is defined as: thinking about thinking (Anderson,2002:23), itrefers to the knowledge and control that we have over our cognitive processes.Existed domestic and foreign researches show that metacognitive knowledge has agreat impact on English learning, and can play a regulating role in the learningprocess, and thus is very important for English reading comprehension. EnglishReading is both a relatively independent cognitive behavior; and a metacognitiveactivity, including the behavior of setting reading goals, adjusting according to thetarget and evaluating the reading material. This thesis uses Flavell’s theory ofmetacognition and O’Malley’s theory of metacognitive strategies, aims to investigate whatroles metacognitive knowledge plays for MA students in reading comprehension andhow metacognitive knowledge, the level of English language and English readinglevel relate to each other. This thesis tries to give tentative answers to the followingquestions:(1) What is the overall situation of Chinese MA students’ metacognitiveknowledge on reading comprehension?(2) If the level of English language proficiency has been controlled, ismetacognition and English reading test performance relevant?(3) Do students with a higher level of metacognitive ability show a higher levelof English reading ability than those with the lower levels?(4) And what is the interrelationship among metacognition, the level of Englishproficiency and English reading comprehension ability?By controlling the influence of English proficiency, the author usedmetacognitive knowledge questionnaire and English reading test to investigate therelationship between metacognitive knowledge and MA students’ English readingcomprehension performance, data analysis shows that:(1) In students’ reading system of metacognitive knowledge, the lack of strategicknowledge of procedures and conditions and task knowledge needs to be addressed. (2) Metacognition and English reading test performance are relevant.(3) There are significant differences in the performance of the students atdifferent metacognitive levels of in English reading.(4) There are three paths for the two factors to affect the level of English reading.The first path is the direct impact on English reading from the level of Englishlanguage; the second path is the direct impact on English reading from metacognitiveknowledge; the last path is the indirect impact on English Reading frommetacognitive knowledge by way of the English proficiency.The conclusion has significant implications for English reading class. Based onthe analysis of empirical research data, the author put forward some strategies forteacher to following so as to improve reading class.