Study On Promoting Learner Autonomy In FL Learning By Cultivating Learners' Metacognition

The term of learner autonomy was put forward by Holec in 1980s. In more than twenty years from then on, it has become a hot topic in FL teaching. Brooles & Grundy(1998) believe that LA should be the goal of each learner and teacher. As a matter of fact, LA is regarded as the ultimate goal in education. What do we mean by LA? As it is defined, LA is the learner's willingness and capacity to control or oversee his/her own learning, including setting learning objective, draw learning plan, choosing learning method, monitoring learning process and evaluating learning outcome. As a kind of capacity, LA is of great significance to learners as well as school education and social development. Whereas, in China, few people have a good understanding of LA. Meanwhile, Chinese students'learner autonomy is quite poor and worrying. They depend too much on teachers. At the same time, Chinese teachers haven't yet realized the importance of LA and most of them don't pay much emphasis on fostering learner autonomy. Essentially, LA refers to independent learning. It is the ability to take charge of one's own learning. The development of LA mainly lies on the development of cognition. LA is always fostered by the way of strategy training, including cognitive training and metacognitive training. Through metacognitive training, the students can learn how to set learning goals, map out study plan, choose learning methods, monitor learning process and evaluate learning outcome, thereby gaining autonomous learning ability. Researchers at home and abroad have launched lots of studies on strategy training in an attempt to foster students'LA. O'Malley & Chamot's metacognitive strategy training shows significance to foster student's LA. In China, Dong Qi, Wang Duqin and Wen Qiufang have conducted researches successively in strategy training. Their studies indicate that the ability in choosing learning strategies, i.e. learners'metacognition level, plays a crucial role in LA. As the above researches suggested, LA is not inborn, it should be cultivated by systematic training. This paper attempts to explore the relationship among metacognition, LA and learners'language proficiency. The author intends to conduct a training both in metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive strategies, which are two crucial elements of metacognition. With the aid of metacognitive training, the subjects are supposed to enhance their metacognitive level thereby their learner autonomy could be improved. The study attempts to answer the following four questions:...