A Study On The Application Of Metacognitive Strategies In English Writing In Senior High School

Writing is one of the four basic skills in English learning. For most Chinese students, although they have learned English for many years, it is still not easy to write a coherent English paragraph. Therefore, comparatively it is more difficult to teach Chinese students how to improve their English writing proficiency. Metacognition has gradually been applied in the field of linguistics and teaching since 1970 s. Metacognitive strategies refer to a high-level managing strategies controlled by the learners consciously, which include proper planning, monitoring and evaluating the learning goals. Students can regulate their learning more effectively as long as they master metacognitive strategies.The author of this thesis applied metacognitive strategies to English writing in senior high school and conducted an empirical study to examine the effectiveness of metacognitive strategy training. The study explores three issues: what are the effects on students’ metacognitive awareness after metacognitive strategy training; whether students’ writing proficiency can be improved through the training; can students’ with different levels receive the same degree of achievements. The subjects were selected from Shenyang No. 36 High School of Grade 2. There were two parallel classes. One was taken as the experimental class, and the other was the control class. The experiment lasted for one semester. In the control class, the traditional approach was employed, while in the experimental class, the author instructed the writing with metacognitive strategies. Throughout the whole teaching process, questionnaire, tests and interview were used to collect data and then SPSS 17.0 was employed to process the collected data, with independent sample t-test and paired sample t-test being conducted. The results of the data show that: through the experiment, the metacognitive awareness and English writing proficiency of the students in the experimental group are improved; the low level students’ received the most achievements, next was the middle level students and high level students made the least progress comparatively. Therefore, the application of metacognitive strategies training in English writing in senior high school is feasible.