A Study Of Metacognition And Proficiency In EFL Writing

Metacognition is an important conception in cognitive psychology (linguistics) put forward by famous American linguist Flavell in 1979. It is concerned with the knowledge of cognitive process, cognitive results and related activities, which includes the ongoing cognitive process (dynamic), self-cognitive ability (static) and also the interplay of cognition. It can be subcategorized into person knowledge, strategy knowledge and task knowledge. It is also called " cognition of cognition", which is based on cognitive strategy. The humankind regards cognitive system itself as cognitive object. Self-awareness and self-regulating on the cognitive process of person and the strategies guided by metacognition are known as metacognitive strategies, which includes metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive operation. Based on cognitive psychological process of learning, western cognitive psychologists, such as O'Malley & Chamot, classified learning strategies into three kinds: metacognitive strategy, cognitive strategy and social/ affective strategy, among which metacognitive strategy is superior to the other two strategies mentioned above. The reason for this is that metacognitive strategy is the procedure of management adopted by learners to learn a foreign language successfully, an act regulated learning process by learners themselves, a higher-order executive skill that involved an ability of consciously using metacognitive knowledge to plan, monitor and evaluate the learning process. Metacognitive strategy in linguistics includes determining and adjusting learning aims, choosing learning methods and skills, and evaluating and self-thinking learning results. To enable foreign language learners to become more aware of their cognitive activities, metacognitive strategy is used to plan, regulate and evaluate the whole process of foreign language learning effectively.In the past more than twenty years, quite a lot of researches have beencarried out by scholars both at home and abroad to explore the relationship between metacognition and second language acquisition (SLA). Research into English learning strategy in China has made rapid progress since the 1990's. More and more foreign language researchers have recognized the importance of language learning strategy in language learning. However, generally speaking, relatively little empirical research has been conducted to investigate the relationship between metacognitive strategy and foreign language learning, especially the relationship between metacognitive strategy and English as foreign language (EFL) writing. Therefore, the empirical study aimed to investigate the relationship between metacognitive strategy and writing proficiency of Chinese non-English majors was conducted by the author of the thesis.Four research questions were addressed to guide the study: "What is the general situation of metacognitive strategy employed by Chinese non-English majors?" "Can metacognitive strategy training improve students' English writing proficiency?" "Can metacognitive strategy training influence students' overall language proficiency?" "Is there any difference between successful writers and unsuccessful writers in terms of metacognitive strategy?"To answer the questions mentioned above, 69 second-year college students from a university participated in the experiment. A metacognitive strategy questionnaire was administered by the author. And the training for the experimental group and control group was conducted on the basis of the results of metacognitive strategy questionnaire. All the data collected from the experiment were analyzed by descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation coefficient and t-test. The results showed that metacognitive strategy not only improved students' EFL writing proficiency, but also promoted their language proficiency indirectly.