The Use Of Meta-Cognitive Strategies And English Writing Errors:A Correlational Study At A Senior High School

English writing is a big challenge for students due to its difficulty and importance.Although previous studies at home and abroad have revealed that both meta-cognitive strategies use and error analysis play a positive role in improving students’ English writing,few studies investigate the correlation between the two important factors.Furthermore,studies on error analysis are centered on practical writing,ignoring the new question type in the English test of the National College Entrance Examination,the continuation task.Therefore,this study selected 166 Grade Two students in a provincial level key senior high school in Fujian Province,intending to find out whether these students could reduce writing errors by the employment of meta-cognitive strategies.Firstly,the researcher investigated the situation of meta-cognitive strategies use in English writing of 166 Grade Two students using questionnaires,and then collected the continuation tasks as research samples in their English test of mid-term examination,and the errors in these compositions were identified and categorized as substance errors,text errors and discourse errors according to James(1998)’s classification of errors.At last,the researcher conducted a correlation analysis between the use of meta-cognitive strategies and writing errors of 126 participants.The findings are as follows:(1)the use of meta-cognitive strategies by Grade Two students is generally at a medium level,which means that these students sometimes employ meta-cognitive strategies,and the selective attention strategy is most frequently used by students;(2)there is a moderate positive correlation between students’ writing score and their use of meta-cognitive strategies;(3)text errors are the most common errors in the continuation task,accounting for more than half of all errors,followed by substance errors and discourse errors,and the negative influence of the mother tongue and the lack of relevant knowledge of the target language are the main causes for these errors;(4)there is a negative correlation between students’ meta-cognitive strategies use and English writing errors.Based on the findings,this study suggests that teachers should integrate meta-cognitive strategies and error analysis into their writing teaching,while students should have the proper attitude towards the errors and learn to employ meta-cognitive strategies to reduce writing errors.