A Study Of Metacognitive Strategy Training For Less Successful Non-English Majors In Universities

Metacognitive strategies are the management steps taken to ensure successful language learning. They include centering your learning, arranging and planning your learning, and evaluating your learning (Oxford 1990). Such self-regulation strategies play a vital role in developing learner autonomy, and their training is now generally believed to be an effective way to improve strategy use and language proficiency.Over the past twenty years research on metacognitive strategies has been on the rise. Compared with the research on other learning strategies, however, the research on metacognitive strategies is still in an embryonic stage. Furthermore, the amount of metacognitive strategy training actually conducted is far less than the amount of research done. So far there have been no reports on the results of long-term metacognitive strategy training intended for less successful non-English majors attending universities.The present research aims to construct a metacognitive strategy training program for less successful non-English majors in colleges and universities, and to further probe the effectiveness of the training model and the training itself.The present research carries out a survey on 167 learners (61 more successful learners and 106 less successful learners), by following the definition and classification of metacognitive strategies from Oxford (1990) and utilizing a modified version of her Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL). Based on the results of the survey, the researcher conducted a one-semester metacognitive strategy training session with the 106 less successful learners (48 of them belonging to the experimental group and 58 of them belonging to the control group) by applying a newly constructed training model from the integration of Oxford's (1990) eight-step model with Weaver & Cohen's 1997 Strategies-Based Instruction (SBL). After thetraining, the same modified SILL questionnaire was again administered to the two groups. The results indicate that the training can greatly enhance both metacognitive strategy use frequency and language proficiency. They also show that a weak correlation exists between increased metacognitive strategy use and improved proficiency, and that only very few strategies can account for a certain amount of proficiency variation, which suggests that many factors may jointly affect proficiency, or metacognitive strategies alone may act on proficiency in an indirect way.In light of the research, concrete pedagogical implications for metacognitive strategy training and the suggested training model are discussed, and corresponding limitations and suggestions are included so as to promote future metacognitive strategy training and improve English learning.