A Study On Metacognitive Strategies Cultivation In Reading Teaching Of Higher Vocational College English Major

The conception of metacognation was first mentioned in 1970s by Flavell, an American psychologist. After that, the affection of it in second language learning has been recognized gradually. The research of metacognitive knowledge and strategies in China started in 1990s, and has achieved a number of positive results. However, a little research focused on reading strategies, and most of the research in metacognitive strategies took the students of university more than those of HVC (higher vocational college) as the subjects.If they could apply the metacognitive strategies into their learning process, the students could automatically plan their learning, select and adjust the learning strategies, monitor the process, and evaluate the results of learning. The former research has proved there are some correlations between the metacognitive strategies and English proficiency. Therefore, metacognitive strategies have important influence in improving and promoting the learning of English.The aim of the research is to explore the effect of metacognitive strategies training on HVC English majors, and tries to answer the four questions: the state of metacognitive reading strategy applied by HVC English majors; whether metacognitive reading strategy instruction effectively can increase HVC English majors'metacognitive awareness; How to instruct metacognitive reading strategy effectively; whether metacognitive reading strategy instruction plays a positive role in enhancing HVC English majors'reading proficiency. The subjects of the research are freshmen majoring in English from Wei fang Vocational College. The instruments are the questionnaire, pre-test and post-test, and the reading diaries from the experiment group. The research lasts for a term and the data was analyzed through SPSS17.0, a statistical software. The findings of the study are: the application of metacognitive reading strategies by HVC English majors is at a less frequency; the in-class instruction based on the think-aloud method enables the students to perform better and learn more; metacognitive reading strategies instruction plays a vital role in reading of HVC English majors.