A Study Of Metacognitive Reading Strategy Training For Vocational College Students

Reading is the fundamental skill upon which all formal education depends. The English course in higher vocational colleges aims to develop the students' practical abilities of using English. The basic objectives of reading are as follows: The students should be able to read short English materials of intermediate level, with new vocabulary not exceeding 3 percent of the total number of the words with the reading speed of no less than 65 words per minute;the students should be able to read practical materials. But when many students enter higher vocational education, they are not ready for the reading demands placed upon them and do not know how to learn.In the past decade, researchers within the field of education have gradually shifted their attention from teaching to learning, from teachers to students, and learning strategies start to attract their attention. In the studies of learning strategies, the importance of metacognitive strategies is generally realized by researchers and it is found out that the application of metacognitive strategies is essential for learners of English. Some studies outside China have contributed a lot to both the teaching theory and practice by showing fruitful findings supporting the significant role of metacognitive strategies in effective and successful language learning.In China, few L2 researchers have explored metacognition and metacognitive strategies in the area of higher vocational education. The current relevant researches are mainly concerned with the four-year university students. Aware of this state the author carried out the present study to explore the following questions: 1) What is the applying state of metacognitive reading strategies by vocational college students? 2) Does metacognitive reading strategy training improve the students' L2 reading performance? 3) How can metacognitive reading strategies be instructed effectively?The author carried out a seven-week-long training program based on metacognitive reading strategies among 79 first-year students majoring in medicine in Binzhou Vocational College in Shandong Province. Before the program, the"Questionnaire of L2 Metacognitive Reading Strategies (QRMS)", designed on the basis of Oxford's strategy inventory for language learning and the research of Wen Qiufang, was used to assess the students' current use of metacognitive strategies. The questionnaire is made up of four parts: planning, selective attention, monitoring and evaluation. The students are asked to respond on a 5-point Likert Scale ranging from 1 (Never or almost never true of me) to 5 (Always or almost true of me). And the reading comprehension test was used as the assessment tool in the pre-test while the post-test was an English proficiency test During the program, metacognitive reading strategy training was integrated into the classroom teaching to develop the students' good reading habits and make them plan, monitor, evaluate and eventually revise to ensure their reading performance. All the raw data were keyed into a computer and SPSS 12.0 was used to conduct all the statistic analysis.The major findings and conclusions of the present study are as follows: Firstly, the use of metacognitive reading strategies by vocational college students is very low. Secondly, metacognitive reading strategy training plays an important role in college students' reading. Thirdly, the training, based on the "think-aloud method" and Chamot's "Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach" (CALLA), proves to be able to make higher vocational students perform better and learn more in reading comprehension.