A Study On ESL Metacognitive Reading Strategy Training For Non-English Major College Students And Its Influence On ESL Reading Effects

The role of metacognitive awareness has been more and more emphasized by researchers in the field of reading comprehension. Researchers point out that metacognitive awareness is the key to distinguish skilled readers from unskilled readers. Since metacognition, especially the ability to monitor the reading process, will improve the reading effects greatly, researchers state that it is important to cultivate readers' metacognitive awareness in reading course. However, such relevant studies are mostly based on English as first language. There are quite few studies concerning ESL metacognitive reading strategy and little training is carried out in natural class environment. In this essay, author tries to employ experimental method to study how metacognitive awareness influences reading effect and whether metacognitive reading strategies can be improved through training.Modern cognitive psychology points out that meta-component is the nuclear of the cognition framework. Meanwhile, reading comprehension is a complex cognitive processing in which reader can read effectively only through actively recognizing, retrieving, and constructing the theme of the reading material. Reading ability must be involved in this process. However, the reader may not be lack of the reading ability, but be lack of the metacognitive ability to coordinate those reading abilities and employ effective reading strategies. Researchers also point out that without appropriate metacognition training, the acquisition of metacognitive ability may not yet develop with the maturity of the reader. When teachers analyze the factors about readers' development of reading ability, the metacognition change caused by training should be taken into consideration carefully.Some researchers point out that reading effects may be greatly influenced by basic linguistic knowledge and strategic knowledge. When linguistic knowledge, i.e. reader's knowledge about word, sentence and grammar is enough to solve all the comprehension problems, strategic knowledge will play little role. Only when the former is inefficient, the latter will be employed to compensate to solve certain comprehension problems. As a result, the role of metacognition is particularly prominent in the solution to difficult reading comprehension tasks. The information processing of reading material mainly takes place in reader's working memory and long-term memory. In the light of theory about the limited capacity of working memory, if those strategic knowledge can be turned into long-term memory and be retrieved automatically, more capacity of working memory may be used to solve more comprehension problems and readers may achieve good reading effects.On the basis of the above theory and opinions, author argues that when readers share the similar linguistic knowledge, it depends on their static strategic knowledge and the dynamic usage of such strategic knowledge for them to achieve effective reading results. Moreover, the most effective usage of strategic knowledge is the automatization of it. In order to proof this view, author tries to explain from three levels: 1) Is strategic knowledge helpful to improve reading effects (static); 2) Is the automatization of strategic knowledge more important to improve reading effects(dynamic); 3) Is it possible to improve metacognitive reading strategies through training?Three both related and independent experiments have been designed to solve the above questions. And the results of experiments show that: 1) Theoretical and practical model of ESL metacognitve reading strategy training is the effective way to improve metacognitive reading strategies. 2) When there is no significant difference in readers' basic linguistic knowledge and the reading material is relatively difficult, ESL metacognitive awareness of reading strategy may greatly influence the reading effects. 3) Automatization of ESL metacognitve reading strategy is the key to reading effects. On the basis of the whole results, the author attempts to establish ESL metacognitve reading strategy tra...