An Empirical Study On The Influence Of Metacognitive Strategy On English News Listening Ability

The meaning of the metacognitive strategy is that the students consciously use planning, monitoring and evaluating strategies to reasonably adjust the learning task. For nearly 30 years, lots of scholars abroad, like O'Malley&Chamot(1990), Wenden(1987) and Nunan(1996), experimented the metacognitive strategy training, and proved its practicality. In China, Wen Qiufang publihed a series of books about strategies study and strategy training. All of these scholars make a great contribution to non-English major listening teaching. However it needs more deep discussion about how to put metacognitive strategy theory and training into university English news listening teaching, and make the students do English news listening effectively and scientifically.Based on the related theories of metacognitive strategies, through analyzing the characteristics of English news reports, exploring its discourse rules and discussing the present problems and solutions of the English news listening teaching, this paper aims to use learning strategies to help students improve their English news listening ability effectively.This paper firstly introduces related theories of metacognitive strategies, and the characteristics and teaching situation of English news. After expounding the relevant theories, the author then takes 74 non-English majors, from Chongqing University as the research subject. By dividing them into experimental class (36 people), and control class (38 people), an empirical research about the influence of metacognitive strategy on English news listening is conducted. The research process is as follows. Firstly, the author makes a survey about the usage of metacognitive strategies, and then English news listening ability test. After the survey and test, the author conducts 8 weeks'metacognitive strategy training in the experimental class, and the control class accepts the normal listening teaching. After the training, two classes take an English news listening ability test. Then the students in the experimental class are given an interview, which is used to know about the condition of strategy use. Through the comparative study on experimental class and control class, the results show that: (1) After the metacognitive strategy training, the students will use metacognitive strategy more frequently and accurately in the process of English news listening. (2) After metacognitive strategy training, students can apply metacognitive strategies to listening, so as to improve the students'ability of English news listening. (3) Successful listening learners are better at metacognitive strategy, and tend to use the Concentrated Attention Strategy and Speculation Strategy in the process of English news listening.The research results show that metacognitive listening strategies can improve students'listening level, and the Concentrated Attention Strategy and Speculation Strategy are the most commonly used metacognitive strategy in doing English news listening practice.